


Flight (When None Pursueth)

by mongoose_bite



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hand Jobs, M/M, Road Trips, although that's not very relevant, levi is a virgin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:28:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2335310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mongoose_bite/pseuds/mongoose_bite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Eren is seventeen, he's a mess. He gets into fights, therapy just pisses him off, and he's sick and tired of endless dreams about dying friends. He's a got a family, but he remembers a different family, and a mother who died and he remembers failing, over and over again, to save people.</p>
<p>And then one of those people turns up in Eren's hometown, and nothing can ever be the same again.</p>
<p>Now with art!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roller

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, my entry for the SNK Big Bang of 2014. Many thanks to my betas, [Imanza](http://momoicchi27.tumblr.com/) and [Morgan](http://momohime69.tumblr.com/). I've never had a work betaed before; it was refreshing.
> 
> Art post by the incredible ravner [here.](http://ravn.co.vu/post/98049733467/title-flight-when-none-pursueth-word-count-26k) Go look at it!

He was ten.

He was ten and he never forgot, no matter how many years passed, that awful moment. No matter how hard he tried to forget, he could only distract himself. He even dreamed about it. In the years since he often dreamed about the moment he remembered his mother dying.

It was never any less vivid.

He could smell the classroom; the other kids, the bright non-toxic paint in the art corner, the smell of pencil shavings and plastic erasers, and, faintly, a banana forgotten in the bottom of someone's bag.

It was cloudy outside. Melissa O’Reilly was picking her nose and flicking the boogers at the back of Candice Keys's head. Girls were gross. Candice hadn't noticed and Eren wasn't going to tell, in case Melissa started flicking her boogers at _him._ She seemed to have an inexhaustible supply and Eren didn't get into fights much back then.

Bill Sunderland had said Eren could try out his new racing game that afternoon and Eren couldn't wait. His mom had said it was okay, and maybe Mrs Sunderland would make cookies with white chocolate for them, the kind _his_ mom never made. But cookies were a long way away, and there were a lot of mathematics problems to get through first. He glared at the lined paper of his exercise book and surreptitiously counted out the multiplication table on his fingers.

There was nothing worth remembering about this moment; it was like a thousand others.

Other than the fact his mom was dead.

It was like a punch in the gut. No, worse. He'd been punched before, in one of his rare fights, and this was more sickening and more painful. His pencil plopped onto the page from nerveless fingers as he stared, not at the back of Grant Richardson’s head but at a memory, new and shiny as a game still wrapped in plastic.

His mother, writhing and screaming above the ruins of a house he knew as theirs, her back broken while he watched, _eaten_ while he watched. She had so much blood in her; when the enormous teeth closed around her middle it spurted out-

There was a sound. Eren didn't recognise it at the time, but the other kids could hear it, because they were covering their ears and staring at him in horror and everything was blurry.

He was screaming. The dreams usually ended there, or segued into something else.

The memories continued.

The teacher, Miss Willis, didn't consider for a moment that Eren was faking it. Up until that day he'd been a mostly obedient, if somewhat inattentive student. She thought he might have been having some sort of seizure, he learned later. Hyperventilating through his tears, Eren wanted to run to his mother, wherever she was. He had to try and save her even though he knew she was long, long dead.

He kicked and fought and cried and an ambulance was called and they gave him something that quietened him down although he continued to cry. All he could tell them was that his mother was dead. She'd been eaten alive.

It took Monica Jaeger only twenty minutes to drive across town to her son, and she took one look at him before flinging her arms around him, crooning and ruffling his hear, nearly in tears herself as she told him it was okay, it was all right, she was fine, she wasn't eaten and he was going to be fine.

And what happened next would always cause a stab of guilt whenever he remembered it, the first of a thousand cuts he would inflict upon his parents. Teary-eyed and chemically calmed, he looked at her.

“Not you, Mom. My other mother.”

Eren exhaled sharply as he realised he'd been lost in a flashback again. What was he doing? He'd gotten pretty good at pretending he hadn't been somewhere else, but by now everyone knew he was off in his own head a good proportion of the time anyway.

If it had just been that one thing it would have been okay, even though at the time his parents and teachers were terribly worried about his waking dream. Everyone would have got over it eventually.

But they didn't stop. It was like his brain kept producing these dreams and memories, in bits and pieces whether he liked them or not. And he hated them. A bakery reminded him of a girl with brown hair. He refused to go into second-hand bookshops in case they had some of those big old leather-bound books that left him shaking and short of breath.

High grey walls gave him nightmares. He refused to eat meat for three months when he was twelve and even now the sight of raw mince in the fridge for tomorrow's spaghetti sauce had him running for the bathroom to vomit. For those first few years he lived in a state of paranoia, unable to know what would trigger some new hallucination.

Now he knew, most of the time. He could deal, even when he was surprised.

None of it was fair. He'd fucked up, he'd failed, it was an endless drumbeat in the back of his brain. His parents and the counsellors they paid for tried to tell him his life lay ahead, that he had so much promise, and he couldn't get them to understand it was too late. Everyone fucking dies in the end.

It wasn't teenage angst, it was the truth. He'd seen so many of them die, or heard about it later. His dreams were full of dismembered friends.

When the talking didn't work they doped him up, but it didn't kill the dreams or the images in his brain, it just made him even less able to tell what was real and what wasn't. He itched. He burned to get out of his own skin.

Life began to suck in earnest, and not just thanks to his own malfunctioning brain. His bizarre new habits- drifting off mid-sentence, bursting into tears at random moments- made him a target for the handful of bullies that every school is burdened with.

Eren had been taught by his parents not to respond, not to give in, to report anything to the teachers and up until now it hadn't really been an issue. He'd been reasonably well liked.

When he started high school, the bullies now included boys who were much bigger and stronger than he was, and one afternoon he was cornered on the way home, drifting off again, ignoring the taunts hurled at his back because he'd remembered a beautiful young woman with her back broken, slammed against a tree, and his utter failure to prevent the tragedy. His hallucinations never made any sense; sometimes he was a child in them and sometimes a young man, but mostly somewhere between the two. But always he was inadequate. He knew she'd died for his sake.

He came to his senses when someone shoved him and he blinked as he returned to reality to face his aggressors, tears trickling down his face.

Don't fight, his mother had told him.

He stumbled against a wall and the three boys loomed over him and something snapped.

Don't fight. He had to fight. If only he'd fought more. If only he'd killed them all.

_Fight, Eren. You're our hope._

He hurled himself at them. They were bigger and stronger, and his rage couldn't change that, but unlike them he had nothing holding him back. He wanted them to die, and he didn't much care if he died himself in the process. He bit and gouged and flailed and they gave him a bloody nose and a dozen bruises, but he didn't stop coming and the fight didn't end until they retreated.

They left him alone after that.

Eren started attracting a new breed of tormentors, ones who had demons of their own to appease and wanted a taste of the violence that Eren could offer. Eren obliged. He dreamed of being trained, of being shouted at and thrown and throwing others in the dust a million times. He discovered he could apply these lessons to reality.

He was suspended and lectured and threatened with criminal charges, but the fights were consensual, and there was nothing much to be done about a group of closed-mouthed teenagers who refused to discuss how they acquired their black eyes and bloody noses. It did frighten him, however, the thought of being locked up; anything but that. And he'd be cowed into acquiescence for a few days before someone would trigger his rage.

As Eren grew older and bigger, and his temper remained an unstoppable force, even these reprobates grew afraid of him and no one touched him at all. There was something in his eyes that warned people off. He was relieved more than anything else. Fighting hadn't made him happy, hadn't drowned out the nonsense his brain vomited all over his life.

And when he thought about it, when he managed to claw back some of himself, he knew he didn't really want to hurt anyone, and he knew he was lucky he hadn't caused any permanent injuries.

Alcohol helped. Buzzed he could live in the moment, and plastered he could simply not live at all. He was thirteen when he discovered the numbing side-effects of his parents' liquor cabinet. His new found coping mechanism gave him the clarity to feel guilty for all he was putting his parents through.

He'd go through periods of trying to make it work. He'd take notes in class and make an effort to talk to people, focus on the here and now. He'd do some chores around the house and try and pretend he was a normal teenager. When it started getting too hard he'd sneak drinks (this was before his parents decided not to keep any alcohol in the house at all.) Sometimes he'd get caught, and shouted at or grounded or worse yet reasoned with. As he got better at hiding it, he got caught less, but it never worked for more than a few days.

He'd fall asleep, and dream, and he'd remember Jean's lifeless corpse standing in for him one last time as they attempted to convince the capital he was dead. Another failed plan. He couldn't remember why it had been so important. He couldn't remember what cause they'd all been dying for.

And he'd be lost again, the futility of everything-including the rage that pulsed through his veins-sending him back right where he started. He hated these dreams; he hated not being able to convince himself that they weren't real. He wanted to, so desperately. He tried everything the therapist suggested, but the therapist didn't understand. He wasn't there. He hadn't seen them, hadn't known them.

Eren hadn't been there either. One evening he tried to write it down, the sick, bloody story of his other life, but he realised he didn't know. The reason had gone, all that remained was the emotion and fragments of memories. And they weren't all bad.

The relief from knowing someone hadn't died (they died later,) Mikasa's smile, Levi's terrible jokes. Riding with the wind in his hair. The hope of a new plan. Friends. Comrades. People he'd believed in. People who'd believed in him.

They hurt more because nothing in reality made him feel anywhere near as good.

Eren lost his virginity at fifteen, having expended no particular effort on his part to do so. Eren didn't really realise that what tormented him looked from the outside, to some people at least, utterly cool. The girl reminded him of Armin and there was something about the slope of her neck, and the way she smiled that calmed him a little.

But she wasn't Armin, and Eren's bone-deep disappointment at the discovery that someone's arms around you and someone's mouth on your neck didn't really change anything meant he treated her fairly badly in the end. Eventually the social cachet of being Eren's girlfriend wasn't worth the erratic mood swings and the indifference to her own problems, and she quietly dumped him.

Eren felt vaguely regretful, and his dick was disappointed but he didn't care that much. She wasn't dead, after all, and by those standards the event was hardly a blip on his emotional radar.

He had friends of a sort. Admirers mostly; other outcasts looking for the protection his fearsome reputation afforded him. He hung out with them when he wanted distracting, but generally he preferred to be on his own, somewhere high up, where he could see the horizon.

Eren lived in a town called Roller, in a part of California as far removed from the beach as from the moon. It was cold and wet in winter, and hot and dry in summer. The Jaegers both had jobs and they lived in one of the nicer areas, where people kept their lawns clear, and assumed the cops were there to help.

Decay wasn't far away, however.

The economy here was no better than anywhere else, and Eren only had to walk a few blocks from his school to find the empty buildings he liked so much. He didn't appreciate them for their aesthetic value, and he had no real desire to explore their innards, but no one stopped him from climbing them, scaling fire escapes and access ladders until he made it onto the roof.

Here under an open sky, with no walls around him, he felt a bit better. He'd sit up there for hours watching the clouds or sleeping. He slept better up there; fewer dreams.

Eren knew no fear. The homeless, the junkies, the cops, and even the twitchy meth dealers didn't frighten him. He avoided the latter simply because he didn't need trouble, and thus trouble rarely came to him. He was not prey.

He stayed in school, a minor miracle that occurred only because his parents promised he could have a car if he graduated. It would be a cheap pile of shit, he knew, but it was the only thing he was looking forward to. Freedom. To take to the road and never look back. He didn't care where he went, and in fact the depopulated vastness of the Nevada desert to the north called him far more urgently than the bright lights of San Francisco or Los Angeles to the south.

So he stayed in school, waiting. And passing, for the most part. To motivate himself he'd picture his car, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, forcing himself into an imaginary driver's seat, not the meat cocoon he sometimes had nightmares about.

He was sixteen when he met Cat. Until that day he'd always pictured that name as more appropriate for a girl, but it suited Cat down to the ground. He moved with a kind of macho grace that had Eren realising, with a kind of resigned amusement, that he might be a bit more bisexual than his brief dating history had implied.

Not that Eren gave any sign of these thoughts, partly because he was freakish enough already but mostly because Cat was a raging homophobe. Occasionally he would even play along with the advances made by other men until he had an excuse to turn on them, ask them if he looked like some sort of faggot, and unleash a rage that was as unexpected and brutal as Eren's own.

But the first time Eren and Cat met, there was no sign of that rage.

Eren was hungry, and lacking in cash. He'd spent the afternoon on top of a deserted mall. He'd napped a bit, and when he'd woken up in a cold sweat under the blazing sun he was sure he was being hunted by some huge naked _thing._ It had taken him a long time to calm down, drink what was left of the warm bottle of coke he had in his bag, and remind himself that he was too old to be scared of monsters.

Now the sun was setting and his stomach was rumbling. If he found one of his friends they'd probably buy him something to eat, but he'd taken off as soon as his last class had ended and he had no idea where any of them were. He could look in the usual places but it was probably easier just to go home for dinner.

He made his way down to the ground floor, which stank of rotting carpet and urine, and then out into the street. He moved purposefully, his hunger driving him on.

“Hey, you.”

Eren paused. The man talking to him was in his early twenties, solidly-built with close-cropped black hair and dark, expressive eyes. He had a couple of friends with him who were maybe a bit younger. Eren didn't know if he could take them or not; he suspected they were armed, but he had no sense, back then, of his own strength. He believed that he'd once killed people much larger than him, but he also believed that his mother had been eaten when he was ten and so he didn't put much stock in his homicidal imaginings. But he wasn't afraid. What happened happened, and they didn't seem aggressive anyway, keeping a polite distance from him and their hands where he could see them.

“I don't have any money,” Eren said calmly.

“That's a shame. You want some?” The stranger grinned, “I know you, man, I've seen you about. This is my turf.” The man spread his arms, to encompass at very least the all-but-deserted street, and maybe the entire world. “They say you crazy. I say maybe, but you ain't the stupid kind of crazy so who cares, right?”

“Okay.” Eren guessed some sort of deal was in the offing, but he couldn't imagine being interested. He didn't want to join a gang particularly; it seemed like pointless effort for little reward. But this guy didn't put him on edge the way most people did, and Eren didn't walk away.

“Those kids you hang out with, your little ducklings? They're stupid. They're dragging you down, thinking that because they got crazy old you in their corner they can do what they like. You ain't helping them, man.”

“I'm not responsible for them,” Eren said.

“That's my point. You just want the kind of friends who know when to leave you alone; you got your own shit.”

“What do you want?” Eren asked.

“I'm Cat, and I wanna be your friend.”

“I'm hungry,” Eren said.

“Yeah? Me too. You guys hungry?” Cat looked at his friends and they agreed they were hungry and so Eren found himself plied with McDonald's while Cat and his friends talked about nothing in particular. He went home afterwards and Cat told him he'd see him around.

And he did. Cat had the ability to make himself good company. People talked to him, gave him discounts and felt bad when they let him down. They felt even worse after he'd punished them, but most of the time he gave the impression he genuinely liked the people he was hanging out with. Girls loved him, and Eren discovered a few months later he had at least one kid somewhere, a daughter, whom he was planning to get something nice for – at least on the rare occasions he remembered her existence.

And he could read Eren better than anyone he'd ever met. If he wanted to be alone, Cat would disappear, and when he wanted company, there he was. He was better company than Eren's old friends, who took to avoiding him. When Eren stopped to think about it he wondered if Cat had warned them off, but found he didn't really care if that was the case.

One evening they were sitting around Cat's apartment, drinking beer while some people Eren didn't know were swearing at each other around the Xbox.

Cat was doing something on his phone and Eren was just sitting at the kitchen table, drinking Cat's beer and eating corn chips. He felt okay; he was managing to live in the moment.

“I know what you're waiting for.” It took Eren a moment to realise Cat was talking to him, and he focused his attention. “You're waiting for me to say you've drunk too much of my beer and eaten too much of my food and now you gotta pay it back. But it ain't like that, this is friendship. I don't make people do shit.”

Eren didn't reply.

“If you want to help you can help, and I'll pay you, but otherwise don't worry about nothing.”

“Okay.”

Nevertheless, Eren itched to do something. In his dreams he was always seized with a terrible purpose, but in reality there was little that motivated him. Still, he started going along with Cat, and in was on these expeditions he saw the older man demonstrate his sudden, explosive rage towards those he deemed inferior. Eren didn't judge him. He was in no position to judge, he decided.

Mostly Cat and his gang dealt drugs and acted as a small-time loan sharks, but in a world full of unreliable people, every opportunity to remain solvent had to be taken. Eren preferred to be slightly drunk when he accompanied Cat. It made these expeditions seem more like fun and less like petty crime. They made him feel like he had a purpose, and comrades, and that feeling was like coming home and Eren clung to it as long as he could, until he sobered up. Cat himself seemed to sense when Eren's conscience was starting to bother him and Cat would simply not invite him for a week or two until he started getting bored and restless again.

Sometimes Eren struck out on his own, not to prey on anyone else but to expend his rage on inanimate objects. Sometimes his vandalism was senseless destruction, sometimes he'd buy paint and try his hand at graffiti, drawing huge looming figures or writing names of people who'd never existed on crosses.

Over the summer he spent several weeks painting what he considered his masterpiece; a pair of overlapping wings that he spread across the back wall of a disused petrol station, so picked because the _T_ _oxic_ _E_ _nvironment_ signs kept almost everyone out. Nevertheless, two weeks after he'd finished the work someone spray-painted a nude woman between them and dubbed her 'Angel.'

Eren spent ten minutes staring at it, seething. The wings were important; they _meant_ something. They were hope and freedom, and honestly he'd been proud of his work; prouder than anything else he'd done all year. He tracked down Cat and asked him where he might find a sledgehammer.

A couple of hours later Eren stripped off his shirt and worked himself into a lather as he turned the brick surface into something more closely resembling the surface of the moon while Cat watched, leaning against the chain link fence and smoking thoughtfully. He bought Eren soda afterwards, and asked him if he felt better.

Eren lied and told him he did, but he nursed a sick, cold feeling of failure for the next few days, and every time he thought of it for weeks following. He couldn't even protect a symbol from some kids with spray paint.

The next time someone gave Cat lip, Eren didn't even wait to be asked; he knocked the offender out cold with one blow.

There was money too, now that Eren ran with Cat. It wasn't very regular, but it was better than nothing because Eren could barely stand school, and he knew he wouldn't last more than a week in most jobs even if he hadn't had a reputation that preceded him all over town. His parents didn't push it; they gave him money sometimes, but he rarely asked for it. He didn't really need it, as Cat gave him food and drink if he wanted it. The money he did get he saved up for his eventual escape, putting it away in a shoebox at the back of his closet. He was quite sure his parents knew about it, but they were probably more relieved than anything else that all he was hiding was his savings rather than drugs.

Cat knew about his desire for a car, and often talked of getting him one someday, but Eren didn't expect it to actually materialise. He knew he was only useful to Cat as long as he was there, and his plan was to leave town and never come back. There was no profit in getting Eren a car from Cat's perspective. So he saved his money and waited for the day he'd leave.

Senior year crawled by at a snail's pace. Eren was seventeen now, angular and wiry with a haunted air and scarred knuckles. He was no longer said to mix with a bad crowd; a year in Cat's service had cemented his position as part of the bad crowd.

He turned up to school slightly hungover, and spent his evenings prowling Roller's streets. He got most of his sleep in class, or sprawled on a rooftop afterwards. Even in the colder months he didn't lose his tan.

“Eren, can I speak to you after class?”

Ms Hall reminded him of poor, doomed Petra, and the guilt he felt was probably reflected in his eyes whenever he talked to her. He'd let Petra down, and he knew he let Ms Hall down too, but she never failed to be encouraging. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, as he hadn't done anything at all in class today other than drift off into another waking nightmare, but he was prepared to look contrite anyway once the class was dismissed and he approached his teacher.

Ms Hall didn't look much like Petra; the resemblance was more subtle than that. She was plump and wore lots of rings which she'd twist around her fingers as she talked during a lesson. Most of the other students liked her well enough, but her attempts to get them to appreciate literature mostly fell on deaf ears.

“I wanted to talk to you about the essay you handed in last week. On Romeo and Juliet,” she prompted him, at his blank look. Last week held little meaning for him, it might have been last month.

“Yes?” It was the first piece of assessment he hadn't asked for an extension for; usually Mrs Hall gave him extra time and he exploited her kindness, but he'd written that essay one afternoon on a rooftop, pouring out the words and handing them in on time.

“I was very impressed. It was clear that his words spoke to you; there was such passion, although I am going to have to mark you down a bit for simple errors you would have caught if you'd read over it a few times.”

“I see. That's good then.”

“Eren, you should feel proud of yourself. I'm proud of you.” She looked at him encouragingly. “I feel like you have a lot to say, a lot locked away. Literature can help us express our pain, free those words.”

“I just-”

“Go on, take your time.”

Eren sighed, “It's just obvious, isn't it? Just cause they were young and all doesn't mean they weren't gonna die. It made it worse, right, cause they were looking at each other not at all the other crap that was going on around them.”

The play had put him in mind of another story, one Armin had told him in a hushed whisper one night, about Franz and Hannah. He wondered what had happened to Hannah in the end, because it was hard to picture her by herself. Franz and Hannah; one unit, one breath. A stupid married couple in a world where such luxuries couldn't be afforded.

He'd loved.

He'd loved people too. Too many people, taken away from him one by one.

Ms Hall seemed to expect more from him.

Eren shrugged. “I dunno, it seemed obvious to me.”

“And you conveyed your impressions passionately and clearly,” she said. “This is the essence of communication.”

Eren could see she really wanted him to be happier about it, but the truth was he didn't care particularly. It was a relief to get a good mark, but all he needed to do was pass. It wasn't like he enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, and in fact he'd fallen asleep when they actually watched a performance; it just happened to make sense to him. Everyone dies, even stupid young people in love. It didn't piss him off the way most of their set texts did.

“Well, that's good,” he said. He wanted to get out of here. He'd made it through another day.

Ms Hall talked to him for a bit about how he might obtain some extra credit, but the idea of doing more school work than he had to was utterly alien to him. There was no point. He wasn't going to college. He was going to get a car and drive, and anything beyond that was too complicated.

Eventually she let him go, and Eren strolled out and checked his phone. Cat wanted him to go out that night, and Eren didn't have anything better to do.

He stepped out into a hot, dry wind that ruffled his hair and smelled like dust. The sky was big and bland, flat and shallow as a pane of glass, and Eren stretched, listening to his shoulders click as he wondered where he should spend the few hours he had free.

Most of his classmates went to the mall. There was only one now as the other one had finally closed a couple years before; Eren remembered people getting upset about it. The economy, the war on terror, the drug problem; none of it bothered Eren much. He wasn't afraid of big, nebulous things any more than he was afraid of getting mugged on the way home.

He wasn't even afraid of death. He felt like he'd died already. Died and dried out in the sun and turned to dust and blew away. Would be nice. Better than chewed and shot and sliced and hung.

He bought soda and chocolate from a convenience store. The chocolate would start to melt in his bag and he'd have to lick it off the wrapper later, but he didn't mind. Cat would buy him dinner.

He left the nicer part of town, and selected an eyrie on top of an old office building on the edge of Roller. He liked this one. It was a long walk, and a long climb at the end of it, but because of where it was situated and its height, he could see for miles and miles squinting into the heat haze as his eye traced the dark ribbon of road out of town and sunlight twinkled off the windscreens of the cars on the interstate. It was his way out. His future.

The evening was warm and unsettled, and Eren chafed more than usual at the restrictions of this world. Cat and the others met him in Roller's memorial park, more because it was central than for any appreciation of its tired and dusty looking trees, or the trash cans overflowing with rubbish at the end of the day. They ate fried chicken, and Eren drank enough beer to get his head spinning pleasantly. He'd grown adept at keeping himself just the right amount of drunk, and the group set off to look for trouble.

Cat was having an argument with someone, and there was some ritual posturing at the edge of his turf and Eren was bored witless by these petty battles that rarely amounted to any actual fighting. It was at these moments, when Cat thought he looked his biggest, that to Eren he looked his smallest; discussing who got to sell drugs on which corners like it was a negotiation for world peace.

Who gave a fuck? Eren laughed uneasily to himself. Cat didn't mind; Eren was scary because he was crazy, and his reputation was as useful as his actual fists. Somehow that brought negotiations to a conclusion, and they loped off again.

“I'm fucking bored,” Eren said.

It was after midnight now, and they'd paced the town like caged lions, but other than scaring off a handful of teenagers and glowering at the occasional police car, they hadn't found anything exciting to do.

Cat looked irritated. He'd been preoccupied with the results of his earlier negotiations, and Eren suspected he wasn't even that keen on being out tonight. But he had to uphold his image, and put Eren back in his place.

“Okay. Let's get some money.” That meant stealing, and since goods were better protected than people, that meant mugging someone. Cat looked at Eren for a moment, as if daring him to change his mind; he knew Eren didn't like that stuff, that he didn't really approve.

“Fine,” Eren said, refusing to back down. He wanted another beer first. He got it.

There weren't too many people on the streets at this point other than police, other troublemakers, and the night shift workers and it was these cleaners and shelf-stockers that they targeted. Generally they didn't put up a fight, but the possibility that they might was enough to ensure Eren wasn't bored.

Eren stumbled along behind the others, feeling guilty and depressed and slightly too drunk to care enough to call it off and go home. They were wandering about a block from a convenience store. Not much else was open to draw potential prey.

“That'll do,” Cat said.

Stomping along under the streetlights was a short man in jeans and a shirt. Hands in his pockets, head down, no meandering as he headed for the convenience store and clearly he was in a hurry. He had long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He didn't look like he was paying any attention to his surroundings, which was just asking for trouble in this town at this time.

Cat ambled along behind him, closing the distance gradually, Eren and the others in tow.

“Hey, you got a light?” Cat asked, when they were within speaking distance. The guy hadn't even broken his stride, or glanced behind him despite the footsteps he must have heard in his wake. He wasn't deaf either, because Cat's words caused him to straighten up, his hands still in his pockets, and turn to look at them over his shoulder.

Eren felt as if the ground were giving way under his feet as his gaze fell upon their victim's _face._ The slouch and the long hair was all wrong, but those cold, narrow eyes and high cheekbones and pale skin was terribly, painfully, nonsensically familiar. Eren inhaled sharply and staggered back, unsure if he was suddenly very drunk or ice cold sober because the guy had clearly recognised _him_ as well, his eyes widening and the colour in his face draining away.

Cat had heard him gasp and looked sharply at him, alarmed at Eren's uncharacteristic distress.

“Eren?”

_Don't say my fucking name where he can hear you!_ But his jaw wouldn't unclench, and Eren caught his right hand curling into a fist as muscle memory pulled him into a salute.

His breath was coming in shallow, panicked gasps, and he'd had plenty of panic attacks before, usually caused by dreams, but he was pretty sure he was wide fucking awake right now.

Who the fuck was he?

The stranger- no not a stranger, he knew him, knew him so well it hurt, was working his jaw, trying to come up with something to say and Eren suddenly couldn't bear to hear him speak in case he spoke with the voice that threaded through Eren's mind and echoed in his ears like a real memory. A voice he'd missed.

Eren turned and ran. Once he'd made the decision to go, no force on earth could have held him back, and he felt like he was flying. He could hear Cat saying something behind him but he didn't care to hear what, and he realised the others were following, trusting he'd had good reason to flee.

The night air burned in his throat, made his eyes water, and ran cool fingers through his hair. He ran blindly, taking turns at random and desperate to get away, not just from the man in the street behind him but from the knowledge that he'd seen him.

He recognised me, he recognised me. Only self-preservation prevented Eren from screwing his eyes shut to try and block everything out. He'd outpaced Cat and the others entirely, fuelled by adrenaline.

Breathless and bathed in sweat he finally had to stop, his legs rubbery and threatening to buckle underneath him. He leaned against a wall, watching the street behind him, fearful of pursuit as his breath rasped in his throat.

But it was only Cat and the others who finally rounded the corner after him, equally out of breath.

He couldn't offer them an explanation, he could only shake his head when they asked him what was wrong and when he spoke all he could say was, “Stay away from him. Leave him alone.”

~~~

Levi didn't move for quite a while. He watched the hoodlums leave, most of them casting puzzled and annoyed glances at him as they went, uncertain as to what this retreat meant for their reputations.

_He_ didn't look back, however, and Levi was glad.

His heart was pounding and his skin felt clammy and a little worm of a headache was starting to come to life somewhere behind his eyes. He didn't take his hands out of his pockets until he was sure they weren't going to be shaking.

He turned and resumed his interrupted journey. A piercing beep alerted the sleepy cashier to the fact that he'd entered the store. Levi reeked of cleaning chemicals. He'd just finished work; he'd spent the last few hours emptying trash cans and pushing a mop around an office building, a job that was tiring and boring.

He was almost always bored. You couldn't have a mind like his and find the real world interesting.

At least he wasn't bored tonight. He stalked through the store, buying rice and beans and other cheap staples, and the cashier kept staring at him and then hastily looking away whenever Levi caught him. He knew by now that they didn't think he was a robber, just a serial killer. It only got worse as he got older.

Maybe he fit the profile, but he wasn't any danger to anyone who minded their own business.

He didn't want to think about Eren, but Eren had haunted his thoughts, one ghost among so many, ever since he'd been a teenager, and seeing him in the flesh-

“It doesn't make any fucking sense,” he mumbled to himself, and the cashier glanced at him in alarm. Levi glowered.

He walked home, which in this case was a trailer park at the edge of town. He could hear a baby wailing somewhere as he unlocked his van and stowed his purchases. Then he decided he wasn't hungry any more, stretched out on the camp bed in the back of the van, and set about finishing that bottle of Jack he'd stashed underneath it the night before.

It didn't solve any problems, but it did make them go away for a while.

Levi hated waking up during the day. Before dawn was his time, but when he cracked open an aching eyelid-everything ached today-the sun was high in the sky and the van was uncomfortably hot.

He was hungover, thirsty, hungry and in desperate need of a piss and could still remember with perfect clarity the expression on Eren's face when their eyes had met. Shit, he'd probably dreamed about it.

He groaned and rolled out of bed onto the floor, disgusted to note he'd gone to bed fully clothed, and relieved to note he hadn't been sick. A few drinks eased his sleep more often than not, but he normally didn't go overboard like that. He was a moderate alcoholic, he liked to tell himself, and not prone to overindulgence.

He'd really done it this time. He took care of himself like it was a duty; drink, eat, bathe, shave. It was about eleven in the morning by the time he'd forced down the last of the tinned soup he'd heated over his portable gas stove and eaten out of a steel bowl.

He had to get out of here, whatever this town was. It was fucking haunted and he didn't want to hang around. He was scared that he'd start recognising more people. Maybe he'd finally cracked; lost all sense of perspective and let his bizarre fantasies bleed into the real world.

No.

No, he wasn't alone in this. Eren had looked terrified too, and he definitely hadn't imagined him running away, taking his gang with him. Why was Eren hanging out with people like that anyway? It didn't seem like him- no, get a grip. You _don't_ know him.

But Levi couldn't leave, which was his first instinct. He'd only arrived a few days ago, the way he usually did, almost broke and almost out of gas. One night's work wasn't going to fund his escape, and he'd paid for his spot in the park for a week anyway. He was stuck here. With Eren.

He had to do something. He was not going to skulk about town in a state of utter paranoia in case he ran into him again. He was going to get some sort of explanation. If there was an explanation.

It was asking too much to hope for more than that. Nothing was as painful as hope.

~~~

Eren didn't sleep. He went home as soon as he could get away from Cat, which wasn't difficult; Cat could tell he was 'plumbing new depths of crazy' as he put it, and let him go. Eren had made him promise not to go looking for the guy.

Levi.

Eren didn't sleep, but he brushed his teeth, and changed into shorts, crawled into his childhood bed and hid. He's going to kill me, he thought. He's going to take one look at the mess I've made of everything and kill me. Or he wouldn't; maybe Eren had imagined the look of recognition. Maybe he was just some guy who looked like him.

Round and round he went, until the sky turned light and he forced himself, hollow-eyed and twitchy, out of bed and downstairs. He watched cartoons until it was time to go to school; not usual behaviour for him, but his parents only observed without comment.

He couldn't keep track of anything. The day seemed to fall through his hands like water. He couldn't really remember walking to school, yet here he was. He couldn't follow the simplest conversation for more that a couple of sentences before he had to refocus and start again.

And what bothered him almost as much as loss of coherency was the fact that no one seemed to think he was behaving any more oddly than usual. Maybe this was more clarity, rather than less. He didn't know what he was going to do after school; part of him wanted to run straight home and hide again. At least while class continued, he was safe.

“Hey Eren.”

Eren looked up. He'd been sitting at his desk, although the class was over, staring out the window at the basketball court and still trying to decide what to do. Now someone was talking to him, a kid he didn't know.

“Yeah?”

“There's a guy outside looking for you.” He looked worried, probably wondering if he'd been better off calling the cops instead of passing on the message. Eren had turned his phone off before he'd gone to bed, and hadn't turned it back on since. Now he did so, and noted a handful of 'get back to me' messages from Cat.

Eren sighed.

Cat was just looking out for him, in his way. He knew Cat didn't want him to go off the deep end, and his behaviour had been a little extreme.

“Yeah, okay, I'll talk to him.” He couldn't begin to explain himself, but the least he owed Cat was to let him know he was okay. As okay as he got, anyway.

It wasn't Cat who was waiting for him.

Eren knew distantly that the sun was still shining and the day was hot and still, but nevertheless he shivered.

“You going to run off again, Eren?” Levi was leaning against a wall, positioned so the shade cast by the school sign fell on his face. He looked incredibly fucking suspicious and Eren was sort of surprised no one had called security to get rid of him.

And that voice. It was everything he'd hoped and feared.

And he really, really wanted to run off again. But he didn't. Instead, he straightened his spine, raised his head and squared his shoulders.

“No, _s_ _ir_.” It felt so right.

Levi flinched. He physically shied away, turning his head, and the unexpected motion brought other things to Eren's attention. Things he couldn't see the night before, and hadn't noticed until he took a proper look at him.

“Don't call me that,” Levi rasped. Eren realised his eyes were bloodshot, his skin wasn't merely pale it was sallow, and his collarbones and elbows jutted from under his shirt. He seemed diminished somehow, still muscled, still hard, but no more worthy of respect than anyone else you might meet on the street. Less, even; his shoes were clean but battered, and his jeans looked worn thin in places. He hadn't been living well.

“Levi?” What had happened? Eren knew what had happened; the same thing that had happened to him, after all.

“Who the fuck are you?” Levi asked.

“Eren Jaeger.” Levi stared at him with those steel-grey eyes he'd been unable to forget and was now unable to look away from. He was waiting for a further explanation, but Eren had none. He shrugged helplessly, “I don't understand it either.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and then let it out. “That's all I wanted to know. Goodbye.” Levi shoved his hands in his pockets and simply walked away. It took Eren a good twenty seconds to realise he didn't intend to look back.

Eren sagged with relief as Levi walked down the street. Nothing bad was going to happen. He'd just been curious, but he wasn't interested in punishing him, Eren thought, his gaze never wavering from Levi's retreating form.

He'd spent the last seven years enduring other people and doing his best to stay away from them, and it took him a while to recognise the ache in his chest for what it was; loneliness. This wasn't right. He took a half-step toward Levi. Then another.

Then he ran. Levi might have flinched at his approaching footsteps, but otherwise he didn't react when Eren fell into step beside him, sweating and breathing hard, harder than was justified by his short sprint.

“Sorry, sir,” Eren said. “I mean, sorry, Levi.”

Levi walked on. He looked very tired, putting one foot in front of the other with the minimum of effort. He led them to the trailer park towards the edge of Roller, just off the arterial road that connected them to the interstate. Eren looked longingly at the gas station as they walked past, with its compliment of fridges full of cold drinks, but he couldn't risk losing Levi.

Levi approached a white van parked in one of the short-term stay spaces, and unlocked the back. Eren kept a polite distance as he stepped inside. The interior was dark, so Eren couldn't see the details of what was inside, but it seemed quite cramped. Levi re-emerged with a bottle of water and sat on the bumper to drink half of it in one go, Eren looking on with envy.

“Satisfied now?” Levi asked. “I live in a van, I clean shitters for a living, and whoever you think I am, I'm not.”

Eren licked his lips, “Can I have a drink, please?”

Levi hesitated a moment and then screwed the cap back on the bottle and tossed it to him. It wasn't cold. Eren didn't care. It tasted divine, and he drank the rest without stopping for breath.

“Thank you,” he said when he was done. Levi seemed to be waiting for a response, but Eren took his time. “You've got the same sort of stuff in your head that I do, don't you?” he asked.

“I don't want to discuss it,” Levi said.

“Me neither,” Eren said quickly. “But you're the only person I've met who gets it. Can I just-” He gathered up his courage, “Hang around a bit?” That was all he wanted. That was _all_ he wanted; nothing else in the world interested him right then.

“I'm going to sleep,” Levi said. “Don't touch my shit, don't bother me, and you can do what you like.” He shrugged and climbed back into his van, and Eren looked away when he realised he was taking off his shirt.

Levi didn't speak to him again. Eren heard the squeak of aluminium when he stretched out on the camp bed and that was it. He didn't mind. He wandered back to the gas station and bought something to eat and spent the afternoon sitting in the shade of Levi's van. It was almost like being on the roof. He couldn't hear Levi breathing and he didn't snore, but the knowledge that he was there was calming.

Levi cooked beans for dinner over a portable gas stove and didn't offer Eren any. He didn't look surprised that Eren was still there, either.

“I'm going to work,” he said shortly. “So you better piss off.”

“I told the others to leave you alone,” Eren said. “If they see you again.” He was braced for Levi to ask what the hell he was doing with people like that, but he merely nodded.

“Yeah? Good.” He locked up his van and Eren walked with him back to town before they split up, Levi to the cleaning company he had a contract with and Eren for Cat's place. He realised he'd ignored Cat all day, and it seemed only fair to let him know in person that he was okay. Also, he was hungry.

“There is no need to apologise, Eren,” Cat said. “You look like you've been doing some serious thinking.”

“Yeah,” Eren said. In fact, he'd been doing the opposite. He was quite sure the Levi in his head had died, but with the existence of a real one confirmed, it was easier to believe his thoughts were imagined and they were easier to ignore. It was quieter. The sense of loss he constantly felt had been dulled somewhat. Cat noticed Eren was practically nodding off in his chair, and said he was welcome to crash, but Eren declined the offer and went home to sleep.

Levi's routine, Eren learned over the next few days, was fairly simple. He worked through until the early hours of the morning, stayed up for a while enjoying the quiet and a couple of drinks, and then slept until mid afternoon. With Eren around he started waking up earlier, so by the time Eren arrived at the trailer park after school he was finishing breakfast.

Eren kept coming around.

Being around Levi was like escaping a thunderstorm to a small cave; the storm was still out there, the rain still blew in, but it was better. Those first couple of afternoons Eren was sure Levi was looking for an excuse to tell him to go away and not come back, but then he seemed to come to some private decision, and Eren was officially tolerated. Probably because Levi didn't plan to stay in Roller long, but Eren avoided thinking about that.

He didn't offer Eren free food, and Eren didn't ask for any; he could see Levi had learned to live with the bare minimum, and Eren staggered his mother by getting into the habit of making sandwiches in the morning to eat with Levi later. They carefully didn't touch, didn't overlap the other's space, they just existed side by side.

“What do you do here?” Levi asked one afternoon as they sat in folding aluminium chairs, staring through the chain link fence that surrounded the park at the people coming and going from the laundromat across the street. It was the only place that seemed to be doing any business at that time.

“Meth's pretty popular.” Levi didn't laugh. “There's a cinema at the mall,” Eren said, but he didn't think that was what Levi meant either. “I like to sit,” he continued. “High up.”

“Ah.”

“Do you want to see?”

Eren took him to the office building. It was by far the furthest walk, but it gave the best view. Levi didn't complain about the hike, or the climb. He just wiped the sweat off his face with his forearm and kept going. When they got to the top the sun was starting to set and they collapsed breathlessly onto the concrete, Eren flat out on his back looking up at the wispy clouds above; Levi sitting with his legs outstretched, braced on his hands and staring out beyond town.

“I want to be above everything,” Eren said eventually. “I don't like having walls around me.”

He'd given up on a response when Levi spoke.

“I like the highway. I like being between places, going as fast as I can, the road ahead open. I hate traffic. I don't like having to slow down. I feel trapped then.”

“Why don't you get a job as a driver?” Eren asked.

“I don't like anyone else deciding where I go,” Levi said. “The choice has to be mine.”

They stayed up there until the stars came out and Levi needed to go to work.

Levi accompanied him other places. They must have made a strange pair, the rangy, disreputable teenager, and the short, tough looking adult, but Eren felt like he'd known Levi forever and it was easy to be comfortable in his presence. Eren showed him the places he'd discovered, and it felt like he was exploring his hometown anew. They didn't find anything terribly interesting, other than an odd sense of nostalgia.

He blew Cat off when he invited him over. If Cat was methadone, Levi was pure heroin; the cure for a blighted life. Cat wasn't terribly happy about this but Eren wasn't afraid of him, so what could he do?

Eren's orgasm woke him up. He convulsed against the mattress and then rolled onto his back, trying to contain the mess in his pants, still half-asleep. He remembered green cloaks and the smell of leather, which meant another dream about his imaginary world, but usually he woke up crying or yelling rather than ejaculating. He was pretty sure his hero-self had died a virgin.

He felt uneasy. As awful as his dreams and flashbacks were, he'd sort of gotten used to them, and he'd learned to fear any change to the status quo. There was nothing to be done about it for now.

He had no school today, and Levi was probably still asleep. Even so, Eren considered visiting him anyway and waiting for him to wake up. When he padded downstairs, the AC stripping the last of the dampness left by his shower from behind his ears. His parents were making breakfast.

“Hey,” he said.

“Good morning, Eren,” his mother smiled at him. Eren got the impression they were afraid of him, and probably not without reason. It wasn't just what he was physically capable of, but what trouble he could bring with him. They rarely fought, simply because he didn't ask much of them other than to keep out of his way, and they didn't deny him.

“Do you want any breakfast?”

No, he didn't. He still felt like he'd done something wrong; not the general wrongness of his existence but something recent and specific. But Levi's dogged insistence on eating three cheap, nutritious, and utterly boring meals a day had guilted Eren into improving his diet somewhat.

“Just some cereal. It's fine, I'll get it.”

His father didn't say anything. He'd been having some sort of worry to do with work, and Eren had been tossed in the 'too hard' basket long ago anyway.

“You've been coming home earlier these last couple of weeks,” Monica tried again.

“Mm.” It didn't feel right to cause mayhem with Cat after hanging out with Levi. Sometimes he wandered about but mostly he just went home once Levi had gone to work.

“Got any plans for the day?”

“Uh. Gonna visit a friend, I think. Play games.”

Monica nodded, and didn't pry any further.

Cat was home.

“Man, I thought you died or something,” he said when Eren walked in his forever open door. He sounded calm enough, but Eren could tell he wasn't very happy. “Where have you been?”

“Hanging out,” Eren said.

“With that fuck with the van? Yeah, I know.”

Eren lifted his head slightly. “You know?”

“You've been having play dates all around town, so of course I do. That's your business, but if you want my advice whatever he's giving you ain't worth it. I'd hate to see you trading your arse to the likes of him.”

“He's not-” Eren shook his head. “He's not selling me drugs.”

“Then what the fuck is it?” Cat hadn't raised his voice, but he hardly ever swore at Eren and the others had gone quiet, concentrating on not looking like they were paying attention. “Cause he sure as fuck ain't got any money- what?” Cat's phone rang and he snatched it up. “Yeah. What? Really? Oh this is good. Yeah, I will.” He hung up, and all trace of ill-humour was gone. “All right well, we got stuff to do today. Come on, Eren, you're invited.”

“Mm.” He didn't want to piss Cat off again. Once Levi left, Cat would be all he had.

“Some fuck wants to talk to us,” Cat said, as Eren and the others trailed in his wake. “I said sure. Why not? I like meeting new people.”

Eren felt uneasy again. Cat was always like this, but today he seemed more so. Eren knew what imminent violence felt like, and he knew Cat was working himself up. Whoever this fuck was, he was unlikely to get a friendly conversation. They set out in search of a pot dealer named Three Dog, whom Eren knew vaguely and who'd heard all the jokes before.

Three Dog was waiting for them, a short distance from the diner he usually did business out of. He had some stupid system where potential customers had to know to offer to buy him something, but Cat said he was just a greedy fuck allergic to paying for his own food. Food and stoners went together well, however, and he was a reliable source of income.

As the group approached, Levi stepped out of the alcove he'd been waiting in, his hands by his sides. He said something to Three Dog who nodded and hurried over to Cat.

“Hey man, good to see you.” He grinned stupidly, and didn't break his stride, making a bee-line for his diner faster than Eren had ever seen him move. Eren and the others stepped out of his way, but neither Eren nor Cat took their eyes off Levi.

He looked more like himself than he'd ever done before, despite the long hair. There was fight in his eyes and the slouch was gone, replaced by loose-limbed stance that had Eren's gut twisting somewhere between fear and recognition and admiration and a kind of weird longing.

“You're Cat?” Levi asked flatly.

“You've got some-” Whatever it was Cat thought Levi had, he never got to explain it. Eren saw it coming- Cat did too, but not quite as early and he was obliged to duck and cower back as Levi's fist sailed through the air towards his face. The others were stepping forward, reaching for knives and whatever else was handy, as Levi sprang among them like a tiger, fists and feet flying, his mouth set in a hard, grim line. He fought like Eren did; for his life, and without hesitation or fear of pain. Unlike Eren, he fought with a bit of forethought as well, gauging what his opponents were going to do next and acting first. He was outnumbered, but simply in a class unmatched by his opponents.

And Eren, Eren just stood there, his hands at his sides. He should, he should join in, he supposed, but on which side?

God he was beautiful. Strong. Strong in a world where everyone was weak. Eren could only stare, his mouth slightly open, his heart hammering in his chest. His instincts prodded him to fight or flee but he couldn't bring himself to move.

“Eren, you stupid fuck! Do something.” Cat looked stunned by the ferocity of the hornets nest he'd kicked, but defiant.

“I told you to leave him alone,” Eren said quietly.

“What?” He'd clearly not expected Eren to ultimately come down on Levi's side. It was a stupid choice to make, but Eren knew he could never, ever go into battle against Levi. Not even to save his own life. Eren was still watching Levi, and he saw him take note of Cat's distraction. Levi ducked under a clumsy swing, and his foot connected with the back of Cat's neck, throwing him forward onto his face.

Levi hadn't escaped unscathed, his hair had been pulled loose from his ponytail, his knuckles were bloody, and his cheek was starting to redden and swell, but downing Cat so definitively seemed to take the fight out of everyone else, and they backed off to see what Levi was going to do next.

“And you should know better,” he said, in a clipped, military tone as he stepped up and planted his fist in Eren's stomach.

Eren crumpled, utterly unprepared for the blow, falling to his knees.

On his knees, in a courtroom, Levi looming over him, a bloody hole in his mouth where his tooth had been, the horrified crowd, the taste of blood. His impotent rage, his desire to save these stupid, venal, self-interested cowards. The hand knotted in his hair.

_Bet it all on me!_

“Eren, Eren, look at me, Eren.” Levi's voice reached him first, then the hands cradling his face and the heat of the sun on his head. Levi was kneeling in front of him, staring into his eyes, his forehead creased with concern.

“Captain!” Eren leaned forward, lifting his arms and clumsily trying to wrap them around Levi's shoulders. He was alive! He was alive after all.

No. Wait.

His stomach hurt. He drew back like he'd been burned, the look of shock reflected on Levi's face.

“I was somewhere else, sorry, sir- Levi.”

But it had been enough. He'd caught the scent of him, the feel of him, and Eren knew it had been him he'd been dreaming about so vividly. Levi rocked back on his heels, still looking slightly concerned.

“Don't call me that,” he said.

Eren glanced about. They were alone.

“Where's Cat?”

“They scraped him up and took him off somewhere while you were off with the fairies.”

Eren forced himself to meet Levi's eyes again. “What did they do?” he asked quietly.

“Come and see,” Levi said, and got to his feet.

They'd trashed the van. The windows were broken and the tyres slashed, and the inside looked like a bear had been through it. Eren's heart sank. He could see some signs that Levi had started to clean up the mess; many of his belongings were sturdy and designed for camping, and he'd sorted out the things that weren't broken.

“I'm so sorry, Levi,” Eren said. He felt like crying. This was all Levi had, and now it was scattered and broken. “Let me help, I'll clean up.”

“I'd really rather you didn't, Eren.” Levi's voice cut through the pity that was rapidly bleeding into self-pity. If Cat hadn't already taken a beating, Eren would have set out on a quest to give him another one. But that hadn't solved anything; Levi had already dispensed justice and what good had that done him? His shit was still busted and now his knuckles were too.

My fault, Eren thought. He'd let everyone down before, and now he'd let Levi down again.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He took a deep breath and turned his footsteps for home. He knew what he had to do. Sometimes his vision blurred on the walk back but he refused to cry. He had to at least try and make this a bit right.

His parents weren't home, luckily, and he went straight to his room, opened his closet and dug through the junk that was piled in the bottom until he unearthed his shoebox. He knew how much was in there as he counted it occasionally, and he took out everything, folding the wad of notes and shoving it into the pocket of his jeans.

He left the empty box on his bed.

When he returned to the trailer park Levi had swept up the broken glass and thrown out that which was completely junked. He was carefully bending one of his aluminium chairs back into shape when Eren arrived. He'd taped up his knuckles, but his face was still swollen.

“Levi.” Eren took out the money and held it out in front of him. Levi straightened up.

“What's this?” he asked.

“Eight hundred and eighty seven dollars,” Eren said. It sounded like a lot when he said it out loud.

“I didn't say how much, I said what.”

“My life's savings. Please take it.” He'd been holding out the money the entire time and Levi reached over and took it.

All gone, just like that.

Levi took a deep breath, “Are you sure?”

Eren nodded. He turned and trudged away, and Levi didn't call him back. When he glanced over his shoulder he saw Levi had returned to trying to repair his chair.

Eren couldn't cry. He climbed up onto a roof and found a quiet spot and curled up with his head resting on his knees and waited, but despite the sick, sad feeling in his stomach and the heat behind his eyes, the tears wouldn't come. Stupid. He'd cried over so many stupid things that weren't even real and now he actually had something worth mourning he couldn't even do that properly.

He gave up eventually. He lifted his head and dug out his phone and deleted Cat and all of Cat's friends from his contacts leaving him with his parents and a couple of schoolmates he hadn't spoken to in months. He knew if he said the right things Cat would let him come back, but every time he thought about him a mental image of Levi's van would resurface and anger would spike through him.

Fuck him.

No Cat, no Levi, no money. It was stunning how quickly he'd lost everything. He couldn't possibly afford to leave Roller now, even if he did get a car from his parents, and without Cat there was no easy way of making more.

He wanted to drink. He wanted to hit someone. He wanted to fucking _cry_. The empty horizon didn't feel like freedom any more; it felt like loneliness.

He went to school on Monday, and afterwards he stood staring longingly in the direction of the trailer park for some time. But he didn't have the guts. He didn't know what he'd say. Levi hadn't seemed angry at him, not after he'd punched him anyway, and that made it so much worse. Maybe he should get a job. Maybe he should make up with Cat. Mostly he wondered how Levi was doing, worried that his money might not have been enough.

Or maybe he'd already left. More than once he started walking back to the trailer park to find out for certain, and each time he turned back as he realised he didn't want to know.

Round and round he went, and the days drifted by.

~~~

Levi looked into his own eyes and squinted. The sun had only just come up and it reflected brightly off the mirror he had propped up on the inside of the van's back door to shave. He hated the communal showers in the trailer park, although he had little choice but to use them, and he shaved outside despite the morning chill on his bare torso. He ran his hand over his chin thoughtfully, checking to see he'd done a good job. He felt better than he usually did in the mornings, despite the sudden change to his sleeping patterns. Cat had stolen all of his booze and he'd decided against buying more; he needed the money for more important things, he told himself.

It wasn't like he was trying to set a good example to anyone. Either way, waking up was easier and going to sleep more difficult.

His hair was down, and he ran his fingers through it. It had gotten so long without him really noticing. He picked out the pair of scissors in his sewing kit, which had survived the attack at the bottom of his trunk unscathed. They weren't ideal, but they were sharp and they'd do. He grabbed a hunk of hair and started cutting it. The blades made a crisp, satisfying sound and the long dark strands fell at his feet.

He'd dreamed about this, about cutting his own hair into a style he'd never worn in reality. It came back to him. He tied it up again so he could get at the back of his head with the hand clippers and he wielded them without hesitation. How, he wondered, would he fare should he decide to wield a sword?

The ends of his hair were brushing his cheekbones when he finally untied it again. The morning air was cool against the back of his neck. The face that stared back at him from the mirror seemed more familiar than the one he usually shaved every morning. He ran his fingers over the short bristles at the back of his head. He'd done a good job, considering how out of practice he was.

“Not bad,” he said quietly.

His back and shoulders were liberally sprinkled with hair clippings and he collected his towel and soap and braced himself for the communal showers. At least they'd be empty at this time of day.


	2. The Road

Eren had watched the sun come up with tired eyes. He'd spent the night huddling in his hoodie on a rooftop as he could really only sleep in school nowadays. There was enough distraction around that he could get some rest there. He felt numb. Even his anger seemed to have given up, exhausted, and he drifted through the days like a zombie. He didn't have anything to look forward to, and he didn't dare look back.

He climbed down and made his way to school.

He thought he was hallucinating. Levi's van was parked near the drop-off zone, not particularly legally, and as he approached the man himself got out of the vehicle. Levi normally dressed in faded button down shirts with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows; the same outfit he wore to work, but today he was dressed in a tshirt.

He'd cut his hair.

Eren might have been tempted to turn away, to run again, but he found himself drawn closer, fascinated. He looked just like Eren had always dreamed; strong, exhausted, and far more clear-eyed than Eren himself was.

And then it hit Eren. He was leaving today. That's why he'd moved his van, woken up early, and dressed for a day of driving rather than an evening of cleaning. It hadn't occurred to Eren that Levi would stop to say goodbye.

He tried to work his mouth but nothing much came out.

“I owe you some things,” Levi said. He put his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a handful of notes that he offered to Eren.

“What's this?” Eren took the money before he could answer. There was, at rough glance, about two hundred dollars there.

“Your change,” Levi said. “You paid for the glass and the tyres; I replaced my own shit.”

“Oh.” Eren clutched the money. Of course Levi wouldn't take more than he was owed.

“And, an apology.”

“What?”

“I owe you an apology, for punching you. I'm sorry.”

“You didn't hit me as hard as you could have,” Eren said miserably. “And I deserve it anyway.”

“It wasn't your fault. Cat was just protecting what he considered to be his investment.”

“Yeah well, me and him ain't friends any more.” Eren frowned. Get it over with, he thought. “You're leaving, aren't you?”

“Yeah. I'm not afraid of Cat but I don't want to stay on his turf any longer than I have to. I've got better things to do than waste my time worrying about some shitty little punk like him.”

“Right.” Deep breath. “I hope. I hope things turn out okay for you, Levi.” He forced himself to meet his eyes.

To his surprise, Levi looked away first, shrugging awkwardly.

“You can come with,” he muttered.

“What?” The bell rang, and the other students started filing in to class. He stared at Levi, holding his breath, wondering if he'd misheard him. He'd been speaking so quietly.

“You can come too,” Levi said. “If you want.”

Eren nodded, and kept nodding. That didn't seem adequate. “Yes. Yes. Yes, I would like that. Yes. Thank you.”

“I ain't paying for you.”

“No sir.”

“And if you piss me off I'll kick you out to hitch-hike home.”

“Yes, sir.” His heart was pounding. He realised he was smiling. Grinning even. The expression felt strange on his face.

“And stop fucking calling me 'sir,'” Levi snapped. He ran his fingers through his newly-cropped hair. “If we're going, let's go. You've got some shit to pick up, I assume.”

“Yeah.”

Eren didn't even look back. He felt like he was walking on air as he made his way around to the passenger side of the van and climbed in. As he expected, it was neat and clean, and smelled like a home rather than a car. Traces of food and cleaning products and sweat and Levi. He glanced back into the interior of the van, taking in the neatly-stowed belongings, both new and mended.

“Shit's gonna be cramped,” Levi said.

“I don't mind,” Eren replied. If anything, he was looking forward to it. He put his bag at his feet, and watched Levi start the van. Eren kept sneaking glances at him, admiring his haircut, and the way he held the steering wheel with one hand, his other arm resting on the door. His expression was hard to read. Eren directed him to his house; his parents would be at work by now.

His parents.

Worry about it later, he thought.

“This is the one,” Eren said, pointing out his house. “You can come in, if you like.”

Levi said he preferred to wait in the van, and Eren hurried in. He upended all his schoolbooks onto his bed, and then picked them up and put them on the floor to get at his blankets; he didn't think Levi had spares. He packed in a huge rush, convinced that Levi would change his mind at any moment and drive off and out of his life forever. His room was a mess by the end, every drawer and cupboard door pulled wide open, and his backpack and overnight bag jammed full of clothing and anything else that might come in handy.

When he hurried out the front door, his pillow under his arm, blankets over his shoulders and carrying his bags, he felt like a kid leaving for a school trip. Levi was still there, waiting. He'd opened up the back of the van and helped Eren stow his gear so it wouldn't rattle around, rearranging his own belongings so they'd fit.

Eren hurried back inside and went to the kitchen, ransacking it for food that wouldn't spoil. Levi raised an eyebrow when he returned with the provisions packed into the plastic bags his mother always saved.

“You said you wouldn't feed me,” he pointed out. “And like, I was gonna end up eating a good portion of this anyway.”

It wasn't really stealing.

Levi shrugged, “Okay, toss it in.”

He was going, really going. Eren was almost vibrating with anticipation as Levi steered them out of Roller. He didn't ask where they were headed. He didn't care; he'd go wherever Levi wanted to go. He watched the town receding in the side mirror, and then switched his gaze to the road ahead. Levi turned on the radio, not particularly loudly. Eren could only hear snatches of the music over the engine and the noise of the slipstream. The windows were down and at first Eren assumed the aircon didn't work, but when he leaned over slightly to let the slipstream wash over the side of his face and ruffle his hair, he understood. It felt right. This was what Levi meant about moving fast; they weren't even speeding, but the wind against his face felt so familiar.

To Eren's surprise and embarrassment he found tears on his cheeks, the first he'd shed in weeks. He curled away from Levi, turning his face to the window so he couldn't see, but he couldn't get them under control. It was like a dam had burst, or more accurately like a river had started flowing somewhere inside him. Something clean and cold, and in the end he gave up trying to surreptitiously wipe them away, and let the breeze blow them across his cheek and into his hair and let them drip off his jaw onto his shirt.

He fell asleep cradled in white noise and faint music, and he slept and slept.

Something cool was touching his cheek. Eren jerked awake, his eyes flying open. It was dark and quiet, and Levi was standing at the window, holding a bottle of water against Eren's cheek.

“Oh!” He was so close. Eren blinked and looked about, uncurling limbs grown stiff with lack of movement. It was night, and the van was parked near a gas station. A couple of trucks were parked a short distance away, and he could hear traffic somewhere close behind them. “Thanks.” He accepted the bottle of water.

“Mm.” Levi stepped back and put his hands in his pockets while Eren drank. He felt groggy and disoriented, but not bad. Nothing food and a piss wouldn't fix. When he came up for air the bottle was nearly empty.

Eren opened the door and stepped out onto the asphalt. The air was surprisingly cold, and the atmosphere was strange and exotic. He could smell exhaust fumes and grease and something else, something natural and sharp that was nothing like Roller. He'd learn later it was desert he could smell.

“Where are we?” he asked, gazing around.

“I don't know exactly,” Levi said. “Nevada.”

“What?” Eren turned sharply to stare at Levi, but he clearly wasn't joking, regarding him with calm amusement. “What time is it? I slept through California?”

“About nine, and yes.”

“Why didn't you wake me up?”

“You looked like you needed the sleep.” Something like a smile was hovering around Levi's lips, but it was hard to be certain in the low light.

“I need to piss.”

Eren hurried over to the gas station, and the smell of food that clung around the building made his mouth water. The bathroom was reasonably clean; at least, it wasn't totally disgusting, and he relieved himself and washed his hands and face and stared at himself in the mirror. He hadn't shaved that morning, and the wind had hopelessly tangled his hair, but he looked awake. Awake and alive in a way that he hadn't for a long time. That's me, he thought, staring at his reflection, where have you been, he asked himself.

When he came back out again Levi had opened up the back of the van and was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the supplies Eren had taken from his parents' house. He offered one to Eren.

“Thanks. So, we're sharing food?” he asked.

“Yeah. And when you're done eating call your parents.”

“What?”

“Your phone buzzed all afternoon.”

“Oh. They probably noticed the state of the kitchen.” They were used to him staying out all night, and rarely called him, but he hadn't put any effort into covering his tracks.

“Talk to them,” Levi said, biting into his sandwich.

Eren nodded.

Ten minutes later Eren kicked at small stones as he paced along the strip of weedy wasteland that marked, pointlessly, the line between gas station parking lot and desert, his phone against his ear.

“Hi Mom,” he said, when she picked up.

“Eren! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I'm sorry about the mess, I was kind of in a hurry.”

“Your blankets are gone. Honey, where are you?”

Eren took a deep breath, “Nevada. But Mom I'm fine. I'm-” his gaze travelled over to where Levi stood, leaning against the van with his arms folded, watching the traffic on the highway. “I'm more than fine. I couldn't stay, Mom. It was killing me.”

“You promised you'd go to school until you graduated.”

“No, you promised me a car if I stayed. I'm not hitch hiking, Mom, I'm with a friend. He's a good person. I'll be okay.”

“Eren-”

“Mom, for the first time in seven years, I think I'll be okay.” He willed her to understand, to understand what it meant to him.

“You're seventeen, Eren.”

“I'll call you, Mom. I'll let you know I'm okay. You'll see.”

“Look, you can't just-”

“I love you, Mom.”

Silence. He really hoped she wasn't going to cry. He hadn't said those words in a long time.

“I love you too, sweetie.” She sounded choked. “Please be safe.”

He spent a couple of minutes collecting himself before returning to Levi.

“How'd it go?” he asked.

“I don't think she's gonna call the cops, at least.”

“All right. Good.”

Levi moved the van somewhere a bit more out of the way, and Eren unpacked his blankets and laid them out on the floor next to Levi's camp bed. He'd spent so much time dozing on rooftops that the steel floor didn't really bother him, but he couldn't get to sleep. Levi had been driving most of the day, and soon Eren could hear him breathing deep and evenly.

Eren shifted around, arranging his blankets. Levi said it got pretty cold here at night, but that with the two of them in the van they'd stay relatively warm.

The two of them.

Eren realised his heart was beating fast at the thought, even though there was no reason to get excited. Levi was asleep. He couldn't even see him from where he was lying on the floor, but he stared in his direction anyway. He hadn't had time to give it any thought, but now he wondered why Levi had offered to let him come along. Maybe the indifference was just an act. This had to be a pretty lonely life.

This isn't just for my benefit, he thought. Levi had his reasons too. He'd have to make sure Levi didn't regret his decision to bring him along. It took him a long time to sleep, and for once it was because he was picturing the future, rather than the past. The road stretched out ahead of them, and they were free. They could go anywhere.

The next morning, Eren was woken up by Levi's foot nudging his shoulder. It was very early; when he looked outside the sky was a pale shade of blue, and the shadows were cold.

“Are we going to Vegas?” Eren asked, as Levi stepped over his puddle of blankets to open the back doors.

“No,” he replied. “It's a horrible place and I hate it. I don't think you'd like it much either; too many people and too many walls, even if they're covered in neon.”

“Yeah.”

They travelled.

Their personal belongings reached an equilibrium, and the van started to smell like both of them. Sometimes they'd reach a crossroads and Levi would ask Eren which direction he wanted to go in, knowing it was just as random as if he'd picked it himself. They managed, somehow, to loop around Las Vegas, and into Arizona.

They didn't talk all that much, other than about the surface necessities; food, weather, shelter, and money. Eren appreciated Levi's sense of order; it gave him a framework upon which to hang his days, as he scrubbed the pots and pans and brushed the dust out of the air vents in the cabin. He learned to use the gas cooker. Levi practised making strange, almost hesitant jokes, and Eren gave him strange, hesitant smiles in return.

There was zero privacy, and time alone had to be planned in advance. Eren learned that Levi insisted on shaving outside, unless it was actually raining, propping up a mirror on the back of the van while Eren squinted at himself in spotty gas station bathroom mirrors and similar places. They were obliged to change their clothes in the van more often than not, and Levi politely ignored all of Eren's unwanted erections, which happened with such regularity every time Levi so much as took his shirt off that Eren himself gradually ceased giving a fuck. Levi himself didn't seem to be terribly self-concious about his own reactions to Eren's body, a fact that Eren learned rather belatedly, having decided that averting his eyes didn't do any good and he was better off enjoying the moments he got to see his companion undressed. He saved them up for later.

Later was usually late at night, when Levi's breathing had evened out and Eren would jerk himself off as silently as possible. He didn't know if he was relieved or frustrated that he never figured out when Levi did the same.

It was one of the many, many things the never spoke of.

When the money started running out they'd stop at whatever town they were in and find work. Eren preferred warehouse work to cleaning, selling his youth and energy moving boxes and crates and getting paid in cash for his trouble. If there was none of that work to be had Levi's excellent references, and the fact that he'd worked in a great many places before, usually found them something picking up trash or cleaning toilets. The Eren of a few months ago would have turned up his nose at such a degrading job, but he'd learned the value of money since then and Levi's quiet pride in his own work didn't hurt either.

But they still preferred the spaces in between. Life was best when they had the money for gas and food, and they could just drive. Eren's favourite times where when they had enough water to pull over at rest stop or even find a side road off the highway and spend the night away from towns. The stars blazed brightly in the desert and it was just the two of them around the gas stove, the sound of the van cooling, and the scrape of cutlery.

It felt so familiar; it reminded Eren so much of the best of his dreams, and occasionally he caught himself almost asking after Hange, or turning to see if Armin wanted anything more to eat. He got the impression Levi knew what he was thinking at these times.

Even if they didn't talk about it, they couldn't hide what haunted them from each other. As much as Eren's life had improved, it was an escape and not a cure and the memories still ambushed him at odd moments. He didn't get lost in them the way he used to, at least. Levi's voice, his soft, 'hey, Eren' was enough to bring him back from his flashbacks, even if he was sometimes surprised Levi wasn't in uniform when he returned. Eren still suffered from a deep sense of guilt, and he still had nightmares.

Levi did too.

The first time Eren was woken up by muffled cursing he wasn't sure what was happening. It was completely dark, and he sat up, hearing Levi's camp bed creak as he tossed and turned. He realised Levi was having a nightmare, but he wasn’t game to do anything but watch over him, willing him to sink back into less troubled sleep.

Eventually he went quiet, either waking up or escaping the nightmare, and Eren lay back down, feeling useless and concerned. Levi didn’t deserve to suffer, not the way Eren did.

If his own nightmares woke Levi up, Levi never mentioned it, although some mornings he nudged Eren awake more gently than usual, and regarded him with sad, knowing eyes.

Eren dreamed about Levi more than he used to, as if proximity to the man bled into his dreams. They weren’t all bad, either. In the dream world, Levi was security, reliability, protection and comfort, even though part of Eren always knew he was doomed to die.

One night he woke up, feeling broken and betrayed by friends. He still didn’t understand what exactly they'd done or why, but the pain in his chest never lessened; his past self never believed it until it was too late, never shielded his heart. He blinked away tears of bewilderment and realised that he was not alone in his suffering, and that Levi still wrestled with a nightmare.

“Damn it, wait!” he said clearly. “Faster,” he muttered into his pillow, and then Eren heard a pained groan of grief. He couldn’t just lie there any longer. He sat up and reached out to shake Levi’s shoulder.

“Levi? What's wron-” He grunted in pain as Levi backhanded him across the face. “Levi!” He grabbed the flailing hand, and Levi muttered something angry and incoherent and after a few moments struggle he relaxed and said clearly, “Let me go, Eren.”

Eren did so and a few moments later he squinted as Levi clicked on a torch.

“Shit,” Levi muttered, sitting up and shining the light on Eren's face. “You're lip's bleeding. That was me, wasn’t it? I'm sorry.”

“It's okay.” His heart was racing. Gingerly he reached up and touched his lip. “Are you all right? Sorry, stupid question.”

“It was.” Levi's eyes were red and he looked paler than he usually did. Older, too, his hair stuck up in all directions.

Eren's heart went out to him, but he didn't know what to do about it, what sort of comfort would be appropriate.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Levi said shortly. “I'll live.” He clicked off the torch and Eren heard him flop back onto the bed.

“I know.” Eren sat in his mess of blankets. He could hear the occasional rumble outside as a truck went by, and the light pollution falling on the windscreen illuminated it just enough that Eren could trace the outline of the front seats. “Levi?”

“Do you want the first aid kit? Or some water?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll lick it.” He sucked on his lower lip for a few moments, exploring the wound. It didn’t seem bad; his lips were windburnt and cracked to start with, and the slap hadn’t been that hard or well-aimed.

It was cold, and Eren mounded his blankets up a little, but didn’t lie back down.

“We have the same dreams, don’t we?” Just like that, he broke the silence that had stretched beneath their everyday speech.

“Not exactly the same,” Levi said.

“No.” The darkness was a comfort, and he hid in it. “But I always thought it came out of my own head, until you. What do you think it means?”

Levi was silent for quite some time. “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But I do!” Eren surprised himself. “Sometimes. It’s lonely.”

He heard Levi sigh, and he wondered if he was going to get told off, but in the end all he asked was, “What do you want to say?”

“That I’m sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Levi replied softly. “You were a good kid.”

I wasn’t, Eren thought, I wasn’t good enough. But he couldn’t bring himself to say anything, not to Levi. He lay back down and made himself comfortable, and at some point he must have fallen asleep.

The next morning they both acted like nothing had happened, but it had, and the space between them seemed smaller.

Some miles after they’d resumed their journey, Levi spoke. “If it gets bad, wake me up.” A faint smile. “And duck.”

Eren nodded, “Yeah.”

It didn’t happen often, or rather, it was rare that Eren woke up, but when he did he’d be braced for Levi’s attack while he touched his shoulder and whispered in his ear. Oddly enough, he never struck out again, and sometimes he’d settle down without waking up and Eren felt warm with pride and affection.

One morning he woke up before Levi, a rare occurrence, and realised it was because he couldn’t turn over. His hand was stuck.

He opened his eyes blearily, braced for them to sting, but the sun wasn’t even up yet.

Levi was nearly-face down in his pillow, and angled awkwardly near the edge of his bed, one muscled arm trailing over the side and his fingers wrapped around Eren’s hand. Eren had no idea who’d been comforting who, and he smiled as he laid his head back down.

When he woke up later, he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing.

Eren took to writing letters home. He didn’t have access to a computer, and when he called home often the conversations were awkward and short, even though his parents continued to pay his phone bill. His father seemed quietly glad to be rid of him and he never knew what to say to his mother. So he wrote letters.

He bought a notebook with pages that tore out easily and some envelopes and sometimes while Levi drove he curled up in the passenger seat and wrote. Ostensibly they were to his mother, but they were for himself as well; it came as a shock to realise that he would have graduated from high school by now if he’d stayed in Roller. Life seemed timeless, measured in the rising and falling of the sun, nothing more, but whole months were slipping by. Eren didn't think he'd mind if they turned into years.

Mostly he wrote about things he’d seen, fixing them in his own memories. They didn’t overwrite the old ones, but they helped. He wrote about the jobs he took and the places he went. He didn’t write much about Levi; his mother had asked him about his mysterious friend, but what could he say?

Levi had saved him, there was no question in Eren’s mind. When he looked back on his life in Roller he shuddered. It couldn’t have led him anywhere good in the end. Levi had saved him, saved him every morning when he kicked him awake and gave him something to do. Saved him by example, by suffering the same way Eren did and somehow continuing on. Mostly saved him by reminding him, just by the way he looked at him sometimes, or said his name, that Eren was saving him as well.

It wasn’t always peaceful between them. You couldn’t live so close to another human being and not butt heads with them sometimes, and every so often Eren got sick of Levi’s endless demands for cleanliness or his ridiculously early hours. He was sure Levi got sick of him too, for equally important, petty reasons.

“Do it yourself,” he said one sweltering afternoon, when Levi had tasked him with cleaning the remains of a large, and clearly well-fed, insect off the windscreen.

“What did you say?” Levi asked, looking up from where he was arranging their food supplies for the eleventh fucking time who cared they were only going to get out of order the next time they ate.

“I said I ain’t doing it,” Eren snapped. They’d only just finished a stint of work the day before and his arms were still sore and he was tired and the last thing he wanted to do was scrub at insect guts until His Majesty’s impossible standards were met.

“I gave you an order.” Levi’s voice was calm and cold and exactly like the one Eren heard in his dreams.

“You aren’t my fucking captain any more,” Eren hissed.

“I never was. That’s your delusion. I’m just some guy who’s sharing his van with an ungrateful little shit who can’t be bothered pulling his weight.”

“Fuck off!” That was unfair and he knew it. “You’re so full of shit.”

“I am so sick of your fucking face,” Levi said. He didn’t shout, he just made pronouncements as if the world, or Eren’s face, would rearrange itself if he spoke clearly enough.

“Fine then. I’ll walk. You won’t need to look at my face any longer.”

And so Eren did. He angrily grabbed his wallet and bag, even though it wasn’t packed, and stomped off beside the road, head down. He wanted Levi to try and stop him, even though he knew he wouldn’t. He knew he was being childish, but he needed to be sometimes.

One or two cars even slowed down for him, but he shook his head and watched them speed off again. If he needed a break from Levi, the rest of the human race was also excluded. He walked his anger off, stretching his legs and feeling the sweat gather on his forehead and soak through the back of his shirt. He remembered what it was like to be alone and he enjoyed it for a little while.

He didn’t pay any attention to the traffic, so he didn’t notice Levi drive past him, but he wasn’t surprised to see him waiting at the next rest stop, windows down, his elbow resting on the door.

Levi watched the sky, his head tilted back, until Eren was close enough for the crunch of broken glass and gravel to alert him to his arrival.

“How did you know I wasn’t gonna turn around and go back for you?” Eren asked.

“It’s not really your style,” Levi said. He passed a bottle of water out the window to Eren, and Eren noticed the windscreen had been cleaned. “Do you want to stay here tonight?”

Eren looked around at the rest stop. “Nah, it’s too close to the road. Let’s drive ‘til it gets dark.” He opened the passenger door and slung his bag into the back and took his shoes off before propping his feet up on the dash; he was allowed to do this as long as he cleaned it afterwards.

Levi steered them back into the stream of traffic and Eren caught him smiling faintly and all was right again, at least until the next spat.

One hot afternoon, while the van’s shadow ran ahead of it and climbed up the back of the pickup truck in front of them and the radio played unremarkable rock music, Eren chewed on the end of his pen and reread the half-finished letter in front of him. He couldn’t remember the name of the last town they’d driven through, but he didn’t like giving his parents too detailed an idea of where he was anyway; they seemed resigned to his nomadic lifestyle, but he’d rather not make it too easy for them to alert the police if they changed their minds.

He missed junk food. He knew Levi wouldn’t say anything if he chose to spend his money on some, but his conscience would remind him that the money could be better spent elsewhere. And he had to admit, his new diet had done wonders for his acne. Or maybe he was growing out of it.

Maybe he’d get a coke the next time they stopped for gas. Just one. Or some chocolate.

He was so wrapped up in dreaming about such indulgences, he didn’t notice, at first, that Levi was singing along to the radio. When he did, he kept his notebook in front of his face and peeped around the edge of it to make sure he wasn’t hearing things.

Levi had his arm hanging out of the car, and his right hand kept the van on course with only two fingers; he drove like he was half-asleep most of the time. And he was singing softly, Eren could see his lips moving. He looked relaxed and content, for they had plans to spend the night under the stars, plenty of money (by their standards at least,) and absolutely nothing to worry about. Eren kept his nose to his notebook and observed. He looked so much younger like this.

The music changed, after a pause for a station break, but Levi didn’t miss a beat and he kept right on singing.

Eren knew this song. He didn’t particularly want to, but he did.

“This is Nickleback,” he said, lowering the notebook at last.

“Yeah,” Levi said, glancing over at him.

“You know all the words,” Eren said accusingly.

“Eren, I’ve listened to a whole fucking lot of radio over the years.” Something mischievous and bright was lighting up his eyes, and it wasn’t just the sunlight reflecting off the wing mirror beside him. “If your delicate musical sensibilities can’t handle it, you can walk.” So saying he reached over and turned the radio up; he didn’t usually have it much louder than barely audible, but now it flooded the van.

“Are you really doing this?” Eren asked, but Levi wasn’t done yet.

He opened his mouth and sang for real and as _How You Remind Me_ assaulted his ears, Eren realised Levi _sucked_. His voice was nice enough, but he was completely flat, and hitting the notes only approximately. Eren cringed, mainly from second-hand embarrassment, grinning in spite of himself.

“Jesus Christ, Levi,” he muttered.

“I said I love you and I swear I still do.”

Eren didn’t hear the rest of the verse. Just those words from Levi’s mouth made him feel like his heart was being squeezed. It’s just a song, you idiot. Scrambling to regain his equilibrium, when the chorus rolled around again Eren joined in, belting out the words as if the noise could drown out his own thoughts.

“This is how you remind me of what I really am!” He could see Levi smiling around the words, smiling wider than he ever usually did, when he realised Eren was joining in. He glanced away from the road for a moment and their eyes met and Eren wished they’d replay the song so he could sing that verse too, because Levi was just some guy, he realised. Just some guy who’d shared his life with him, not a captain, not a hero, not a warrior, and not likely to die. They were free, if they wanted to be.

Eren’s voice cracked on the last verse, something it hadn’t done for quite a few months and Levi laughed.

He turned the radio down as the announcer returned with some messages from the sponsors.

“And I thought I was a lousy singer,” Levi said. “We could make a fortune; you sing, and people pay us to make you stop.”

“Shh, Levi, no.” Eren waved his hand, trying to grasp on to his train of thought. Something important. “I’m having a, a, what do you call it?”

“A panic attack? An orgasm?”

“No! Fuck you, I’m trying to think.” His eyes were watering from the effort of trying to keep a straight face.

Levi put on a mock-horrified expression. “Just hold on, I’ll pull over and get the first aid kit.”

“Stop making me laugh,” Eren gasped. “You ass.”

“There’s our exit,” Levi turned off the highway, following a sign that indicated a tourist drive. They liked tourist drives; there was usually something worth looking at, and most of them had rest stops which weren’t strictly camping grounds, but then again, they weren’t strictly camping.

“Ugh, Christ.” Eren finally mastered himself. “I have something important to say,” he said clearly.

“Okay, shoot.”

“No, can we stop for this?”

Levi glanced at him and nodded. They were obliged to drive on for a while longer, navigating the tiny town before they turned onto the tourist drive proper. This late in the day the road that led up to the rocky escarpment was all but deserted.

Gravel crunched under the tyres as Levi pulled off the road and killed the engine. He twisted slightly in his seat so he could regard Eren face on.

“What’s up?”

“I was just struck by a thought, you know. If we looked at our situation from a different perspective, not from our perspective, but from theirs.”

“Who?”

“Like, you remember stuff, don’t you?” He braved Levi’s eyes, but Levi wasn’t giving anything away, listening attentively but with a guarded expression. “Instead of us being us, and this shit like, haunts us, what if we assume it was all real? And from the perspective of the people we were, things have turned out okay, right? I mean, no one’s trying to kill us, no one’s expecting us to save everyone.”

“Which is good, because we certainly can’t be relied on to do that,” Levi muttered.

“You can’t beat yourself up about something if it’s not real,” Eren pointed out. “And if it is real, then shouldn’t we be celebrating? We’re alive, Levi.” Say it, say it, just fucking say it. You’ve come this far, you useless coward. “We’ve got each other.”

Levi took a deep breath and looked out the windscreen. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, I’ll think about it.” He turned back and restarted the engine, and Eren left him alone to think. He’d said what he wanted to, and he wasn’t sure he’d convinced himself entirely, but it was worth thinking about, wasn’t it?

They found a spot that overlooked the miles they’d just covered, and Eren got out to stretch his legs and take a leak before the sun set. When he got back Levi had opened up the back and was starting to make preparations for dinner. They’d cooked a whole lot of rice in the last town, and Levi was making fried rice from the leftovers. Eren joined him, helping out and sniffing hungrily as the garlic and onions fried.

“Make enough for lunch tomorrow?” Eren asked.

“I’ll try,” Levi said dryly. “But if I recall the last time I did that someone ate it all anyway.”

“It was really good,” Eren muttered. Or he was really hungry, one of the two.

They cooked and ate their dinner, and drank bottled water. Night fell fast and cold and they sat on either side of the gas stove even after Levi had turned it off, soaking up the residual heat.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Levi suggested.

“Yeah.”

Levi retrieved a torch while Eren hunted through his clothes for his hoodie; he hadn’t worn it much recently. They locked up the van and ambled out onto the road, continuing onwards by unspoken agreement; they always forged ahead rather than retracing their steps.

The road was reliable so Levi kept the torch off for now, and above them the stars blazed like they never did anywhere else but in the desert. Eren craned his neck and stared upwards, his hands dug deep into the pockets of his hoodie. They were high up, or at least it felt like they were, and Eren had trouble believing it was summer. Back in Roller everyone would be sweltering already, or staying in the air conditioning.

“So you think it's all real somehow?” Levi said, once they’d established a comfortable walking speed.

“I don't know, how could I? I just think it might be easier if we treat it as real. Stop beating ourselves up for imagining things. It's better if it's real, in a way.” Eren didn’t feel half as confident as he sounded, but he felt obligated to put his argument forward as best he could.

Levi folded his arms and bowed his head, and Eren couldn't see his expression in the dark but he could almost feel the discomfort radiating from him.

“Maybe it's better for you,” Levi said. “But the things I remember doing, and failing to do- I don't want to be that person. I did once; I wanted to be strong, but it wasn’t the kind of strength that can carry any sort of proper life.”

“I don't want to be the person I was either,” Eren said. “I failed everyone. You all had such faith in me- no, it was like you didn't have any choice. But in the end, all those deaths and all that sacrifice was for nothing.”

“You failed?” Levi had stopped walking, and Eren could feel his gaze on him.

“You died still having faith in me,” Eren said sadly. “I'm sorry; I let everyone down. In the end, I know I died too.” Alone.

It hadn't occurred to him that Levi wouldn't have known how it all turned out. He'd had hope in him right up until he died and it was a feeling so familiar Eren wanted to crawl away and hide, but there was no hiding out here despite the dark. There was no running from the endless stars above, coldly observing the madmen comparing their madnesses in the desert.

“You don't know how it ended either,” Levi said. “That world we have so much trouble accepting no longer exists, right? You said it yourself.” Levi drifted closer, “It would be best to believe whatever makes things easier. If I choose to believe we somehow participated in a war against great odds, and gave our lives for the cause, then I can choose to believe our sacrifice–their sacrifices—were enough.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I believe, somehow, that I could fly once. I'm sure I will eventually if I really put my mind to it.”

Eren tried the idea on for size, recasting his failure as a tragic triumph. He didn't know if it was possible, but he owed it to Levi to try. Only Levi had a lot more practice in believing in him; Eren had none.

Levi's quiet sneeze halted his train of thought.

“Fucking cold,” Levi muttered.

“You should have worn a jacket,” Eren said, taking refuge in normality, in the real world. Levi was only wearing a thin cotton shirt; no wonder he was cold.

“Well, I didn't.”

Eren unzipped his hoodie.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you my coat.”

“Then you'll be cold and we'll be no better off than we are now.”

“Well.” Eren didn't really want to take his hoodie off, that was true, but he'd started making the offer and it didn’t feel right to just rescind it. He edged closer to Levi and opened his coat and tried to drape it around his shoulder as best he could. It was a joke, really, and he expected Levi to say something in an exasperated tone and walk away, but he didn't move, his arms still folded across his chest. His skin was cold. Eren wrapped them up in his hoodie as best he could, holding the edges of it around the shorter man. As old and stretched as it was, it didn’t really wrap around more than half way.

Levi didn't really give many openings for physical contact, and normally Eren would have been too chickenshit to take them anyway but they were discussing forbidden things, and the normal rules seemed suspended. Eren stared up at the stars and tried to imprint on his mind the way Levi’s hair smelled without actually burying his face in it and giving himself away. If he couldn’t make Levi happy, at least he wanted to help make him warm.

“How long has it been since you washed that?” Levi asked eventually.

“I'm sure I washed it the last time we did our laundry. I think.” They were standing so close Eren could feel as well as hear Levi sigh.

“Let's head back. We can fire up the gas and make some tea.” It was rare Levi suggested this; he preferred not to waste gas on luxuries, and Eren tugged at his arm, half-expecting he'd change his mind when they got back.

“Come on, then.”

They half stumbled on the road as they separated, the cold air washing away the warmth Levi had left in his chest. Eren halted, fumbling for the end of his zipper to do up his hoodie but Levi didn't slow down. Eren could hear him jog away, and he abandoned his task to follow. They were on the road and there was no danger of getting lost, and little danger of tripping over something, and so Eren bolted, intending to pull ahead of Levi. Levi wouldn’t be caught so easily, and without any convincing reason for doing so they were running in the dark, Eren's hoodie flapping out at his sides as Levi raced ahead.

The cold air brought tears to his eyes as Eren followed down the slight slope towards their van, and it became less about going fast and more about keeping their balance as their feet thudded ungracefully into a ground they couldn’t even see. By the time they finally pulled themselves up, back at the van, their faces were flushed and Eren's hair was tangled. Grinning like children they flung open the back doors and scrambled inside and Eren turned on the stove while Levi pulled on some warmer clothes and Eren wished they hadn't established that they sat across from each other with the flame between them. Two feet was too far away.

A hot flame, the bubbling of water, the clink of mugs, and the shadowed face of a trusted companion; such things are what makes someone human, Eren thought, wrapping his hands around his steel mug and then setting it aside when his fingers threatened to burn. He expected to sleep well.

He didn’t.

Levi stood alone and Eren knew, he knew, he couldn't help him, that whatever monsters had resurfaced from his murky past, he had to face them alone; Eren's duty lay in another direction. And he didn't think anything of it, either, for he had such faith in the strength of the strongest he didn't think he'd ever be defeated. He wasn't afraid for him.

The man was not exactly Levi's father, and Eren knew he hated him, and when Levi's blade took his head off it was only relief on his captain's face, not triumph, while Eren tried to make good his escape, glancing over his shoulder one last time.

And the woman they had taken for a subordinate, two rooftops away, flung herself flat and lined up her shot and Levi was flung forward on the headless corpse as the bullet impacted his spine.

It was not a quick and easy death; it was a death to match the life that had preceded it. Levi didn't stop moving until he could no longer move. He didn’t stop killing until he could no longer kill. A man does not need his legs to fly.

Eren remembered it all, right down to the gentle breeze and the way blood ran down the shingled roofs, right down to his own renewed determination to fight on, to carry the strength of those who had died for him. To fight.

Eren woke crying out in the dark, uncertain as to what was real and what was a dream, and what had he decided earlier? That it was all real. That this, somehow, was better than the alternative. He must have been mad. He didn't think, he acted, thrashing up out of his blankets and reaching for Levi in his camp bed.

He just had to check he was alive.

It had always been dream-people he'd watched die, his grief at one removed, but Levi was real, real as you could get. His dream self had greatly mourned him, Eren knew this, but his dream self hadn't slept beside him, and woken up with his fingers wrapped around his own, hadn't stood under the stars with him and sung songs with him and hadn't wanted, wanted so much it hurt, to make him happy.

Eren cried and yelled and shook Levi awake, and Levi didn't deck him for the intrusion. Simply repeating his name and asking him what was wrong.

“I saw you die,” Eren managed to get out and Levi rolled over and wrapped his arms around him.

“I know, I remember,” he muttered in his ear, his voice still blurred with sleep.

Eren sniffled and held onto him, running his hand down his spine, unbroken, whole, and feeling his heartbeat, breathing in his breath. Levi had been waiting for this, he realised, he'd known that sooner or later Eren would remember how he'd died, because he didn’t seem surprised at all.

“If I'd seen her I could have dodged,” Levi muttered. “I know I could have.”

“It's fine, it's fine.” Eren stroked his hair, “You did so much. You did enough.” He was shaking and his heart was pounding. He's still here, he's okay.

He gave thanks, finally, for this shitty life, for this indifferent world, with its cruel and stupid people, with its injustices and lack of meaning, because he was _still alive_. He was grateful for every polluted river, every abusive driver, every screeching alley cat, every wailing child, every greasy fast food place, every strung out junkie, every miserable old bastard, every sociopathic stockbroker, every uninterested parent, every ungrateful child. Because this was the world in which Levi was alive, and he was alive.

He was sitting up, his arms draped around Levi who was propped up on one elbow and awkwardly holding him with his other arm. If he wasn't so miserable he'd be really happy, Eren thought.

Levi stirred finally, kicking off his blankets and Eren was forced back onto his air mattress as Levi crawled out of bed, practically falling on top of him. He moved out of the way, still doing his best to keep a grip, and welcomed Levi into his blankets and they tangled up somehow, warm and safe.

He calmed down gradually, sobs replaced by sniffly sighs. Levi had shifted up so he could hold Eren like a child, tucking his head under his chin while Eren pressed his nose into his collarbone. He could almost have been asleep, but one hand still gently rubbed Eren's lower back.

Eren had to take a few moments to convince himself he wasn’t still dreaming. His heart still thundered in his chest, but it wasn’t fear that send his blood dancing through his veins with such speed. When they woke up tomorrow, would Levi pretend that it never happened, or pretend that this was normal? Eren wouldn’t mind the latter, he could get used to it easily. But as much as he appreciated the comfort, it wasn’t enough.

Eren uncurled a bit, pulling his head back and craning his neck to look up at Levi’s face. It was still too dark to see; the blackness so absolute it was like a physical force on his eyes. Eren sighed, and smiled and closed his eyes before leaning up to press his lips against Levi's mouth. What else could he do? No words would be sufficient to explain.

“Seriously, Eren?” Levi mumbled against his mouth.

“Yeah.”

“If you get a hard-on I'm kicking you out.”

“But this is my bed.”

“Exactly.”

Eren curled himself down again, his courage finally failing. He felt like he’d done enough, anyway. He had to take charge of his life sooner or later, he had to decide what to do, because for the first time it felt like mere survival wasn’t enough.

“Levi?”

“Hm?”

“Can we go somewhere?”

“We are.”

“No, we’re always going nowhere. I want to go somewhere specific.” It was a fraught request; as Levi had said long before, he didn't want others to dictate what direction he went in.

“Where?” he asked, after a long silence.

“I want to see the ocean. I don't care which one.” It felt important, it felt right.

“Hm. Go to sleep, Eren.”

~~~

Believe it’s all real. Only Eren could say it so cheerfully, so casually, like it was as simple as choosing which pair of jeans to wear in the morning- no, that wasn’t quite fair. But still, Levi had lived a lot longer; both in this life and apparently in the last one, and when the best you could say for yourself was that you didn’t _kill_ the person you tortured (but you killed so many others, didn’t you Levi? You were trained so well, and even your redemption—to fight monsters on behalf of humanity—turned out to be a lie,) how could you embrace that person you used to be?

Eren was- _is_ pure, and he was utterly filthy. And somehow it had worked. Levi remembered that much; their strange camaraderie, their unthinking acceptance of the other as a person of trust.

He didn’t remember this, though. Waking up with Eren wrapped around him, his drool on his shoulder and his dick hard against his leg and the blankets reeking of them even though all they’d done was sleep. It wasn’t like this the first time; the way Eren looked at him now wasn't something he recognised from his dreams.

Neither was the way he responded. The way his hormones crackled and fizzed in his guts and chest. The way sometimes it was a great act of will not to just pull Eren close and do whatever it was people who liked the way the other smelled did. Levi had gathered from their conversations that Eren was probably more experienced than he was. He was certainly more comfortable with whatever was happening.

He could only play the sensible adult for so long and Eren was knowing where he was an innocent. His mother had (probably) kissed him. Eren’s lips were different, and part of Levi was afraid of them. He could be inadequate, or too adequate, or he’d break something precious, or be broken in turn.

It was always going to be like this. This lifestyle wasn't a life, and Levi knew that eventually something would change; maybe he would be content, or something close to it, endlessly driving the back roads of America until his teeth fell out and his hair went grey, but Eren, Eren whose inner fire had only been dampened by this world, would not be. He'd needed this, this time and space and freedom, to work out who he wanted to be and what he wanted to do with himself. Levi had no doubt he'd succeed; he knew Eren well enough for that.

He looked at Eren’s sleeping face in the pre-dawn light, memorising every shadow, every freckle.

If you love something, set it free. Sounded like a good way to watch something you love get hit by a car two minutes later, he thought, but he didn't really have any choice in the matter. Eren needed to go, and Levi knew how impossible it was to prevent Eren from doing what he had to do.

Levi untangled himself, and Eren woke up as he squirmed away.

“Uhh.” He made a half-hearted effort to keep a grip, and then seemed to remember what he was doing and let Levi go.

“You wanna go the beach huh?” Levi said, while Eren tried to collect his scattered wits. “Well, let’s make it a good one then. You okay with California?”

“Mm.” He rubbed his eyes and frowned. “Just as long as we stay outta Roller.”

~~~

Head still fuzzy with sleep, Eren squinted against the sun as Levi opened the back of the van and hopped out to start his morning. Had last night really happened? Eren flopped back on his mattress and rolled around sleepily in the blankets for a while, searching out the last traces of Levi's fading body heat.

He'd remembered how Levi had died. Eren had kissed him. They were going to California. It was all a bit of a jumble and Eren sorted it out as he woke up. Then he got dressed and deflated his mattress and put it and his blankets away as he did every morning, and the ritual wasn't as comforting as it usually was. They generally didn't say much to each other in the mornings; they had their own nightmares and memories to deal with, and the gave each other the space to do so, but the atmosphere that morning was weird. Charged.

He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know where to begin.

When they were ready to leave, about three-quarters of an hour after they'd woken up, Levi did something Eren had never seen before; he opened the glove compartment and took out some maps.

“So we're really going to the ocean?” Eren asked.

“Unless you've changed your mind.”

“No, but, I didn't expect you'd say yes. You always say you don't want to be told where to go.”

“And if you'd told me to go to the ocean I'd tell you to fuck off,” Levi said flatly. “You asked, that's different.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

“Mm.”

Eren drew breath several times to say something more, but each time his nerve failed. Things weren't going to be the same from now on. Their aimless days were behind them, and part of him knew they were never going to come back.

The edge of the continent might well have been the edge of the world. Levi handed him the map, and Eren measured out the remainder of their journey in inches while Levi started the van. It felt like they'd covered half the planet in the months they'd been travelling, but now, looking at the map, Eren realised that they'd barely gotten started; the world was big.

He almost told Levi to forget it, to turn around and pick a random direction, because he seemed so resigned. He had a look on his face that Eren hadn't seen in this world before; an acceptance of fate.

They were kind to each other.

They sang along to the radio, and stopped to look at particularly nice sunsets and Levi told sly jokes and Eren laughed at them, and they caught each other staring a whole lot. Eren did his share of the cleaning extra-carefully, and most nights they stayed up drinking tea and watching the traffic and carefully saying nothing at all.

Making memories, Eren thought. Parting on good terms. He didn't try to kiss Levi again; it felt wrong to try, that there were more important things to think about. The ocean came next, and after that he didn't know. But he was pretty sure Levi was going to say goodbye. He'd forced him to look directly at their shared past, real or imaginary, and a shadow had settled across Levi as a consequence. Eren caught him looking at his hands and flexing them sometimes. He made an effort to be in the moment with Eren, but when he stopped he went somewhere miles away.

California.

It was hot and bright and crowded, and palm trees made Eren's heart beat faster. He hadn't specified a beach, but Levi seemed to have picked somewhere particular to go, and Eren didn't ask him where; he'd see when he got there.

At night they slept without blankets under a layer of insect repellent with the van doors open to let in whatever stray breezes might happen past. Neither of them were heavy sleepers, and anyone snooping around was seen off in short order. After the desert the humidity was a nightmare until they started to acclimatise.

Eren could cover the distance to the ocean on the map with his thumb.

The night before the last day's drive, Eren couldn't sleep. He lay with his hands behind his head, staring up at the familiar roof of the van and listening to faint music coming from somewhere nearby. He didn't think Levi was sleeping either.

The first glimpse of the ocean was between two houses, and Eren caught it sitting bolt upright in his seat. Levi had picked a relatively small coastal town away from the large tourist centres, although as they began to smell salt on the breeze they could see advertisements for beach side accommodation and they drove past surf shops and convenience stores with _Live Bait_ signs outside. Levi pulled over and consulted his map for a few minutes while Eren leaned out the window and turned his face to the sea breeze.

Soon Eren could see the beach beyond the camping grounds and tourist lodges. It was late afternoon, and the sun was dropping towards the Pacific. The traffic was mostly in the other direction, as people were making their way back from the water's edge. Levi eventually turned into an almost deserted car park, decorated with _No Camping_ and _No Dogs_ signs. When he killed the engine Eren could hear the rise and fall of the waves beyond the thin strand of trees and the dunes that separated them from the beach.

“We made it,” Eren said. “This was our dream, you know? Even when we didn't believe it would happen.” He glanced at Levi, who was staring blankly in front of him, slightly slumped over like a marionette with the strings cut. “Come on, let's have a look.”

Levi followed as Eren hopped out of the van and pulled off his shirt. He didn't have any swimming trunks but boxers would probably do. Levi followed at a slower pace as Eren followed the marked path through the dunes, his hands in his pockets.

Christ it was big.

Eren stopped and stared, the sand soft under his feet. It had been a long time since he'd seen the ocean, and he'd forgotten so much.

He glanced over his shoulder and caught Levi watching him, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Come on, let's swim,” he said. He moved to take off his shorts and paused, sure he could feel Levi's gaze on his skin. When he looked at him Levi wasn't smiling, and he didn't move.

“Levi?”

“This is your dream, go on.”

“What?” Eren stepped closer. The sun was in Levi's eyes and he looked away, frowning. “The ocean's big enough for both of us,” Eren said, trying to be light-hearted. He didn't feel very light-hearted.

“I don't want to go on,” Levi said. “I don't want to accept all of this; Eren, you were our hope and you made it to the end, and I-” He was looking at his hands and flexing them again. “I killed so many people. I can deal with being some kind of fucked up loser; I'm okay with that, really. And you're moving on from that and I am _so glad_ that you are, because you deserve so much better than this. And you'll get there; I believe it.”

“Levi, no, you can come too.”

“I don't want to!” He snapped. “You're beautiful and ridiculously-” he shrugged, and Eren realised, just for a moment, how Levi saw him, and it nearly took his breath away. “You. And I'm a criminal, and a war criminal, and a torturer, and a murderer, and I've tried, Eren, I've tried to face it and I can't. It's too big. Not even for your sake.”

Eren was going to argue, to put forward all the good things he remembered of his captain, the kindnesses, the compassion, but he realised they were feelings, not actions. There was nothing he could say to wipe away the blood that he knew stained Levi's hands.

It wasn't fair.

What could he say?

“I forgive you.”

Levi looked at him. “What?”

“I forgive you,” he repeated, more sure of himself. “For everything. I forgive you for walking away now, if that's what you want to do. I forgive you for killing all those people. I forgive you for everything.”

“Just like that?”

“Yep.” He reached out and took Levi's hand. “I know what you did. Some of it, anyway. And I forgive you for that, and for everything I don't know.”

“Eren, you can't just-”

“Yes I can.” He took a step backwards, tugging on Levi's arm. “I can and I am.”

“Eren.” Levi reluctantly took a step.

“Who else can do it, Levi? I'm not gonna say what you did didn't matter, but it's over now.” Another step, nearly stumbling in the sand. “You're not gonna forgive yourself, so I'm gonna do it.”

They were walking now, Eren still moving backwards, pulling Levi by his hand towards the ocean. The sound of the waves grew louder, and he flinched slightly as cool water washed over his feet and ankles.

“I'm still dressed! I'm wearing jeans.” Levi said, trying to free his hand.

Eren gripped him harder. “You should have thought of that earlier.” He grinned, as the next wave caught the back of his knees. Levi pulled off a shoe and tossed it over his shoulder, hopping on his bare foot while he removed the other.

“Dammit, Eren.”

The water was cool and inviting after a long, hot day and still gripping Levi's hand Eren turned to face it, laughing as a wave crashed against his chest. He felt the resistance lessen as Levi gave up on trying to keep his clothes dry. He tasted salt.

He let go of Levi's hand, suddenly feeling self-concious about it. The water averaged about waist height, and Levi's shirt clung to his chest. He didn't look unhappy though, instead his expression was somewhere between stunned and resigned and Eren thought he'd probably gotten away with whatever it was he'd gotten away with.

They were here. They were standing in the ocean and there was the odd seagull floating in the warm air above them, and Eren realised he felt a little lost.

He started when he felt Levi brush up against his side.

“Eren.” He stepped in front of him and put his hands on his shoulders. “I forgive you too. Even if we all died in vain, even if you failed us, I forgive you.”

It was probably the salt and the setting sun in his eyes. That was probably why they were stinging.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Eren hugged him. He bent his head forward to rest his forehead on Levi's shoulder and he felt Levi sigh, but he didn't try and push him away. Levi forgave him.

Levi was facing the wrong way and Eren's eyes were shut and the wave hit them without more than a second or two warning. Eren grabbed Levi harder in some misguided attempt to protect him and they both went down in a tangle of limbs, the sand washed away from under their feet. Salt and sand and water swirled around them and got into Eren's nose and mouth. A few disjointed moments later Levi hauled him to his feet, coughing and spluttering. They'd been washed a couple of feet closer to shore, and the foam swirled around their legs.

Levi didn't look amused. His hair was stuck to his face and he ruffled it irritably and Eren grinned. Levi scowled at him further and he laughed, because he knew a mock scowl from a real one by this point.

Levi finally relented and smiled.

“Hey, Levi.”

They were in no danger of getting swamped by another wave, and Eren closed the gap again.

“Seriously,” he said, and leaned in and kissed him. Levi made a small sound, like he was going to say something, and after a few moments in which Eren's pounding heart felt like it was going to drop through his stomach he cautiously moved his lips a little.

“Was it that bad?” Eren asked, pulling away when he couldn't take any more. His face felt hot.

“No, that's not it,” Levi said so quietly Eren could hardly hear him over the sound of the waves. His forehead was wrinkled in worry. Eren didn't get it; he'd kissed him back, sort of, although he was pretty terrible at it-

Oh.

_Oh._

Eren grinned, and Levi frowned at him.

“Eren,” he said warningly.

“No, no I'm not laughing at you. It's okay.” Ah, fuck it. He leaned in and kissed him again, harder, and this time Levi pressed back, clumsy and aggressive and Eren could feel his frustration and embarrassment. And determination to get it right. Levi clamped his arms around Eren's torso and Eren parted his lips invitingly but it wasn't until he'd pressed his tongue against Levi's teeth that Levi accepted the invitation, tilting his head slightly and Eren cupped a hand around the back of his head, gently rubbing the bristles at the back of his neck and they didn't pull apart until they'd sucked all the sea salt from each other's lips.

“Fuck,” Eren said. “Wow.”

Levi shrugged awkwardly and pulled at his shirt, which was sticking to him. He met Eren's eyes and looked like he was going to ask something and then he just shook his head and smiled.

“Are you done here? I think I have sand in my ears.” He prodded at one with his little finger.

“We can come back for a proper swim tomorrow morning,” Eren said. “Wake me up early.” Because Levi was going to be there tomorrow morning, and that mattered more than anything.

Levi shot him a look as he waded out of the surf. “Really?”

“Yep!”

Levi was ahead of him, but he paused to pick up his shoes and shake the sand out of them and Eren ran up and leaped on him and he staggered as Eren wrapped his arms around his neck and his legs around his waist.

“What are you doing?” Levi asked, bearing the extra weight without a lot of apparent effort.

“I'm happy, Levi. I can't believe it.” He rubbed his cheek against Levi's wet, salty hair. “Are you happy?” he asked.

Levi sighed and Eren slid down off his back and stood on his own two feet again.

“I don't know. Maybe? Stop asking stupid fucking questions.”

Eren backed off, a short distance at least, as they made their way up the dunes to the van.

“Sand,” Levi said, glaring at this own feet. “I do not want sand in my van. And these clothes all need washing.”

“Yes, yes,” Eren said soothingly. The sun had almost completely set by this point, but they could see well enough in the purplish summer twilight. Eren thought they should have sought the beach earlier, but it wouldn't have meant as much if they had. He turned and looked back.

So much was fucked up and unfair, but he was looking at the ocean on a warm summer evening and he'd just kissed the man he was definitely probably in love with. He couldn't complain.

“Hey! Eren, I've found a shower. You're not getting in the van until you use it.”

“Trust you to find a bathroom out here,” Eren said, turning and following the sound of his voice, since Levi seemed to have vanished.

He hadn't found a bathroom. He'd found a little concrete block public toilet which had an outdoor shower attached to it, for the benefit of sandy-footed tourists returning to their cars. With no other facilities (and a _No Camping_ sign) the last of the other visitors had gone, but it was more than enough for them.

“We need to rinse the salt out of our clothes,” Levi said, stripping off his shirt. “Could you get our towels?”

“Sure,” Eren said, instantly forgetting what Levi had asked him to do. Instead he drifted closer, his eyes glued to Levi's back as he turned on the water and started wringing out his shirt. He jumped when Eren's hands settled above his hips.

“What?” he said in a tone that wasn't as harsh as either of them had been expecting. Levi's jeans were glued to his arse and Eren had to tear his gaze away from it to meet Levi's eyes as he twisted around to look over his shoulder. “This is really fucking gay, Eren.”

“I've never done anything with a guy either,” Eren said, wanting to set Levi at ease. It didn't work entirely but his shoulders dropped a bit. If he didn't get to touch Levi after all those months of carefully pretending he didn't want to he was going to implode. So he stepped closer, sliding his fingers around the top of Levi's jeans and reaching around him to undo the button.

Levi heaved a sigh, and then grabbed his wrist, firmly pulling it away from himself.

“All right, fine. There's no need to be so coy; it's nothing you haven't seen a hundred times already.” Still grumbling, he started stripping off in earnest, unbuttoning his jeans and tugging them down with such workmanlike fervour that Eren had to bite his lip not to laugh.

Levi was busy pretending he hadn't noticed and that there was nothing strange about the fact that they were going to take a shower together so Eren followed his example, tossed his shorts and boxers on the concrete out of the way and stepped under the water. It was cold and smelled slightly rusty, but not too bad for all of that. Eren turned his face to it and rinsed the salt out of his hair.

His cock was warm and heavy with anticipation and the cold water couldn't begin to douse the fire in his belly. He ignored it for now though; he hoped Levi would appreciate how he was prioritising getting clean.

Levi had been suspiciously quiet, he realised a minute or two later. He hadn't heard any muttering for a while and he wondered if he'd misinterpreted everything and Levi had left to let him shower in peace. He pulled his head out from under the water and opened his eyes.

Levi was still there.

His clothes were in a damp pile next to Eren's and he was staring at him, jaw slightly dropped, his hands at his sides. Eren's gaze dropped to his cock, and it was rude to stare, probably, but Levi was still staring at him and they drank each other in for a few moments. Nothing he hadn't seen before, Levi had said, but Levi was wrong; arousal had been an unfortunate fact of life to be discreetly hidden if possible, not displayed as an open invitation.

Apparently his harsh breathing and aching cock weren't clear enough for Levi, however. He seemed frozen in place, and part of Eren's heart broke because he had to have lived such a lonely life to be so uncertain now. Mostly, however, he just wanted Levi to come over and let him put his hands on that pale, perfect body, and thick, curved cock.

So Eren offered Levi a hand, a formal invitation, since his feet seemed to have stuck to the sandy concrete.

“Yeah,” Levi said, looking slightly startled. He ignored Eren's hand and instead stepped into his arms, into the water, and Eren could feel goosebumps on his shoulders. Levi pulled him into a kiss, and Eren obediently dipped his head, water running down into his eyes and mouth as he did so.

Levi's hands were on his back and he hadn't been under the water long enough to wash off the sea. Eren chased the flavour of salt along his jaw and down his neck and he licked it out of the hollows above his collarbones. Levi nibbled him back, cautiously at first, and gaining confidence but they were still standing a polite six inches apart, and Eren wrapped his arms more firmly around Levi and pulled him up against him.

He heard Levi gasp as their bodies collided, and then he coughed and spat out the water in his mouth. Eren could feel him, thigh to collarbone, warm and hard, his cock wedged against his hip.

“So what,” Levi said, pulling his head back out of the water. “We just jerk each other off?”

“Yeah? Do you want to do that?” It hadn't been like this with his girlfriend; they'd hardly talked at all, Eren did what he hoped he was supposed to do, and she hadn't complained and he'd assumed he was adequate, at least until she'd broken up with him. He was pretty sure Levi would complain if he did something he didn't like and he didn't want to be merely adequate this time.

“If I didn't I wouldn't have mentioned it,” Levi said. He looked so awkward and his hair was plastered onto his forehead, and Eren felt a great wave of affection for him, so far out of his comfort zone and still refusing to go back. He kissed him again. Kissed him because he never thought he was going to get tired of it and because Levi kissed him back with ever increasing confidence.

They wrapped their left arms around each other's shoulders, bracing against each other because the wall was dirty and too far away from the water anyway. Eren's back and arse were freezing by this point, and Levi's fingers cautiously wrapping around his cock were cold too, but he didn't mind at all. They warmed up fast.

They kissed when they remembered to, but mostly they watched each other, gasping and open mouthed, gazes torn between the other's face and their cock, their hands moving not quite in unison.

Eren came first. He'd come so many times just imagining this that reality was almost too much for him. Just the look on Levi's face would have done it in the end. He inhaled sharply and dug his fingers into the back of Levi's neck, concentrating on keeping his other hand steady, maintaining the rhythm even as every other part of him lost it. He came with Levi's eyes on his face, and his name on his lips choked down to a quiet stutter.

Levi held him upright, somehow, even though Eren could feel his muscles shuddering with every stroke, and he hid in Eren's shoulder when he came, and Eren was sorry he couldn't see his face but there would be a next time, definitely. His fingers were sore; why was it so much more effort to jack off someone else, he wondered.

They leaned against each other, catching their breath.

“You didn't get the towels, did you?” were Levi's first words.

“Um. Shit.”

Eren stepped out of the water finally, and the warm summer air felt like a blanket. Levi ran his hands through his hair.

“Go and get the towels, and I'll rinse out our clothes.”

“But I'm naked,” Eren said, realising for the first time that this place wasn't technically private. Levi didn't answer and so he took a cautious look about and sprinted out from behind the toilet block to the van, opening the doors with fingers still shaky from cold.

A few minutes later they trailed back to the van together, wrapped in their towels. Levi made a makeshift clothesline with some string and hung out their washing while Eren crawled into clean jeans and a shirt.

“I really want fries,” he said, watching Levi get dressed with lazy appreciation. The towels joined their clothes on the line. “Hot, greasy, salty fries.”

“We could pack up and go and look for some,” Levi said, sitting on the back bumper and applying insect repellent. Eren had already swatted two mosquitoes and more would join them.

“No, I've changed my mind,” Eren said. He sat down beside him and Levi passed him the bottle. “I think I'd rather just stay here with you. We can get fries tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

He doesn't know what to say, Eren thought. It was terribly cute. Not that he was going to tell Levi that; he wasn't sure their relationship was quite strong enough for that, not just yet.

“I thought you were going to leave me behind,” Eren said.

“I thought you were going to leave. I'm still wondering-” Levi pinned him with a sharp glance- “What you're planning on doing next.”

“I have been thinking,” Eren said. “I'm here, and you're here. So maybe the others are too; all the people we knew back then. I think we should look for them.”

“They won't be happy to see us, Eren. We died on good terms, I can't say the same for some of the other people I remember. And you weren't happy to see me.”

“I know. But we should try. We can understand what they're going through. No one else can help them.”

“If they exist.”

“Yeah.”

Levi sighed, and then he smiled. “Yes, all right. I'll help you, Eren. Let's go and find our friends.”

Eren leaned in and kissed his cheek. He smelled like insect repellent. “Thank you. I don't think I could do this without you.”

“Yes, yes. All right. What do you want for dinner?”


	3. Epilogue

They called him Jeb, because that was the name he'd given them. He was a God-fearing man in a small, God-fearing community. He fixed the church roof, he fixed people's cars, he fed people's pets when they went away. They gave him somewhere to live; it wasn't much, just a few rooms above a haberdashery store.

They'd call upon him when someone's car was stuck in the snow, or when a dog had run off, or when same dog had to be buried, or when Mrs Hawthorn’s pain was so bad she couldn't make it to the store and someone needed to bring her her groceries.

They'd apologise, too, for putting him to such trouble.

“The Lord gave me two good arms,” he'd tell them. “May as well put them to good use.”

Use a few simple catchphrases enough, and people will think you're simple. He wasn't simple, not at all, but he appreciated the simple life, and that was what they gave him in exchange for the sweat of his brow. When he died they'd bury him here, and the pastor would use him as a sterling example of humble service in sermons for years to come.

He was fine with that. As legacies went, it could have been worse.

He let them believe what they'd liked about his past. He knew the favoured theory was that he was a recovering addict of some kind. He'd tried that, it was true, but punishing his mind had only made his mind punish him back.

It was nearly winter. Massachusetts did not do kind winters, and already the trees were stripped of leaves, and the sky was a leaden grey. He tucked his ears under his beanie and his gloved hands into his pockets before walking to church. Tuesdays he gave the place a good cleaning out, and he'd rake up the last of the leaves from the graveyard.

Maybe a nice thick soup for dinner, he thought, his shoulders hunched against the wind.

There was a van parked halfway down the street, rather battered and painted a dark shade of green. He knew most of the vehicles in town and this one was unfamiliar. The wings painted on the side, however-

“Our Father, who art in heaven.” He ducked his head and walked faster, praying under his breath. His heart was beating fast. He expected—he didn't know what he expected, but when he closed the door of the church behind him he took a deep breath. He wished the church had a door that locked.

He prayed for a few moments and then, his equilibrium somewhat restored, went to get the cleaning supplies.

He heard the door creak open some time later. He was halfway through replacing the candles around the altar and he glanced up. The candles dropped from his fingers and rolled against the nearest pew when he saw the two men standing there.

Oh God please, give me the courage to face judgement. Oh God, oh Heavenly Father show mercy.

They were wrapped in long coats and mufflers, and their heavy booted feet clumped on the wooden floor. The taller one had longer hair, looked older than he'd expected, but his eyes were still bright, and his face still boyish, like he remembered.

And the other, the shorter one-

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

He turned away from them, faced the altar, and fell to his knees.

Our Father, who, please, forgive my sins, do not trespass against- the words rolled uselessly around his head, around his mouth. He gazed up into the painted face of the Son and shivered.

The footsteps halted just behind him.

“You're a hard man to find, Erwin.”

Levi's voice was just as he remembered, clear and dry as a desert sky.

“I knew,” he said shakily. “I knew one day there would be a reckoning.”

He heard Eren kneel down beside him. “We're not here for a reckoning.” His voice was that of a man's now, but he sounded kind, of all things. “We're here to forgive you.”

He looked away from the painting and met Eren's dazzling green eyes, once again. He searched his face, and saw only earnestness and concern. Levi was still standing, and when Erwin looked up at him he looked no less benevolent.

“Really?” he asked, his voice beginning to crack.

“There are people who'd like to see you, Erwin, if you want to,” Eren said.

Erwin put his face in his hands and to his own surprise a sob surfaced from somewhere deep inside him, wracking his whole frame. Eren wrapped an arm around his shoulders and he felt Levi's hand pat his back.

“It's all right,” Levi said. “It's all right.”

He insisted on finishing his chores around the church, and they seemed to understand he needed a bit of time, and they told him they'd wait in the van. When he joined them they were sitting in the back, drinking tea brewed over a little gas stove. The van was a home, Erwin realised; a double camp bed folded off to the side, and no inch of space left unutilised. They gave him tea, and turned off the stove and drove out of town to a camp-ground usually deserted for six months of the year but this time was almost full. A motley collection of motorcycles and cars and even a large, expensive motor-home filled the parking area, and there was a bonfire going, and Erwin could smell smoke and sausages. He opened the back doors cautiously, uncertain as to what would happen next.

He found himself surrounded by familiar faces, faces that had haunted him.

“You found him!” The voice was familiar, but he barely recognised the tattooed figure with the shaved head until they smiled at him.

“Hange?”

They bounded over and hugged him. 

“Well done, Armin,” Levi said. “We couldn't have found him without you.”

The sharp-faced young man grinned and nodded, “Just don't tell anyone how I did it.”

Erwin would learn, later, of the journey that had preceded this reunion. How they'd been pursued by private detectives until Sasha had accessed some of her trust fund to hire a lawyer to get her parents off her back, and how it was only then that she really started eating again. How Mikasa had called the police on them, and they'd had to leave town in despair only to have her join them later, stepping down out of a Greyhound bus with a suitcase in tow. How when they were waiting for Reiner on the day he was released from jail Eren had vomited from pure rage and Levi had done the talking, about how they'd spent all night staring at each other before they could see the person underneath the memories, how two weeks later Reiner had tried to kiss him and Eren had laughed and explained as kindly as he could and Reiner had looked at Levi and told him he could have done worse. How their convoy had grown in fits and starts across all of America.

For now, however, he was welcomed and patted on the back and fed sausages, and he watched Eren and Levi quietly preside over the home they had created for their friends and remembered that he'd had good reason to put his hope and trust in those two.

He'd ask Armin for theories later, but for now he just enjoyed the heat of the fire and the smiles on faces he thought he'd only dreamed of.


End file.
